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Saddam aide: U.N. report skewed
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An aide to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has accused U.N. weapons inspectors of skewing the facts in their report to the Security Council and said Iraq has accounted for its stocks of nerve gas and anthrax. Iraqi presidential adviser Gen. Amer Rasheed said Tuesday that Iraq has provided "complete cooperation in every aspect" but is willing to do more to help weapons inspectors. "We are ready to explain all of these issues. But we have to do it in a cooperative manner -- not as if we are a suspect," Rasheed said. In a separate move Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on Monday promised that Iraq will try to cooperate more with U.N. weapons inspectors but said he could not rule out a strike on Kuwait in the event of a U.S.-led military attack. In addition, he denied Iraq possessed banned weapons and predicted the Iraqi people would not quickly surrender to a U.S. invasion. (Full Story) U.N. and U.S. officials have said that Iraq has to demonstrate it has disarmed. "They need to go out of their way to prove through whatever possible means that they have no weapons of mass destruction," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Tuesday. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council Monday that Iraq had not fully accounted for its chemical and biological weapons programs and had not fully accepted the inspection regime mandated by U.N. resolutions. Rasheed called the report unfair. "There was no proportionate presentation of the facts," he said. "Some parts have been amplified and magnified to what are called problems, so it gives a (negative) impact, while important issues have been abbreviated and sometimes even fully ignored." Rasheed said Iraq's stocks of the nerve agent VX were never pure enough to last more than a few years and have deteriorated, and that the shelf life of the liquid anthrax it produced "would be only so few years." Meanwhile, Iraq's Information Ministry said inspectors Tuesday visited at least eight sites, including an ammunition depot where a dozen empty rockets capable of carrying chemical weapons were found earlier this month. Another three sites were related to nuclear research, three were involved in biological research and one housed Iraq's long-range missile program. Rasheed said the only disputes that remain between Iraq and the inspectors concern overflights by a U.S. spy plane on loan to the United Nations, and the interviewing of Iraqi scientists. "The Iraqi point of view was not presented at all regarding the U-2 and also regarding the interviews," Rasheed said. Aziz made similar comments in his interview on Canadian television Monday night. Blix said no Iraqis have agreed to private interviews so far. Tuesday, he said Iraq had demanded to be allowed to import radar systems capable of tracking the aircraft from sites in northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi air defense radar systems have been battered by U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the "no-fly" zones imposed over northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
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