|
  |
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
'War pressure' - Iraq backs Russia
From CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Iraq's ambassador to Russia has praised the country's foreign minister for comments that pressure was being put on international inspectors in an effort to force them to leave Iraq as a pretext for war. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov did not say on Thursday which country was applying that pressure but a senior Russian official confirmed to CNN he meant the United States. In a tough-talking news conference on Friday, Abbas Khalaf told journalists that Ivanov's statement confirms claims by Iraq from 1998 that it did not expel inspectors, but that the United States had ordered the inspectors out 1998 as a pretext for launching aggression against Baghdad. "Baghdad warned the whole world about this at that time, but no one believed it and even claimed that Iraq expelled the inspectors," he said. The Iraqi ambassador accused the United States of "deceit, lies" and a dirty campaign of "verbal diarrhea" against Iraq. The White House, he said, is now the "Black House from which the smoke of war is coming". Abbas Khalaf said the Iraqi Embassy in Russia is receiving calls and messages from Russians "day and night" expressing solidarity with Baghdad. Asked to respond to media reports that volunteers have signed up to fight for Baghdad, the ambassador said: "We don't need people to fight for Iraq," that the Iraqi people can defend themselves. He refused to say whether Iraq would issue visas to anyone wishing to fight for Iraq. He said Iraq welcomes people who will say "no" to to the United States that there are hundreds of people from countries around the world right now in Iraq to express solidarity against war. The Iraqi ambassador said Russian journalists have priority in getting visas to travel to Iraq. "My job," he said "is to let the Russian audiences learn about events in Iraq not from CNN or other western companies, but from Russian journalists. So there are no limitations on visas for Russian journalists." He confirmed that he had refused to give visas to journalists from CNN, Japanese television and other outlets working in Moscow, which "pour filth on us from morning to night." In Thursday's news conference Ivanov said Moscow had received information that the inspectors "are being subjected to extremely strong pressure ... to force the inspectors to leave Iraq as they did in 1998 or to force them to give the U.N. Security Council evaluations which could be used as a pretext for beginning a military operation." He said Moscow was calling on the inspectors to continue to "objectively carry out their professional work, and the international community should provide them all necessary political assistance and not put pressure on them." At the same time, Ivanov called on Iraq to fully cooperate with the international inspectors. "The sooner we attain concrete results from the activities of the international inspectors," he said at a news conference, "the more chances we will have for a political settlement." Russia has said it will not back any new U.N. resolution endorsing the use of force, and Ivanov expressed confidence the situation could be resolved under U.N. Resolution 1441.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
