Former executive director of UN weapons body, Richard Butler, said Monday that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had told him that his country has biological weapons "to deal with the 'Zionist entity', reported the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Butler said he fears that Aziz's comment is a statement of "genocidal character."
Speaking at a lecture in Jerusalem sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Butler said that, two years after Iraq kicked out the UN monitoring agency, Iraq is back in the business of making weapons of mass destruction, and that only a united Security Council can prevent Iraq from producing biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, said the daily.
"The regime will only be spurred to produce more weapons following Iran's successful launching of a long-range missile on Saturday," Butler said.
But it was "from day one" that Saddam decided to refuse to obey the laws, said Butler, currently a diplomat in residence at the Council for Foreign Relations in the US. "Either the Iraqis' declarations were false, phony, or filled with deceptions and evasions," he said.
Faced with political pressure from Russia to "lower his standards" and a crumbling Security Council consensus, Butler drew up a list of disarmament requirements for the Iraqis to bring an end to the sanctions, the daily added.
"They refused to comply with my list because it was right. The things I was asking for were precisely the weapons that if we got hold of, Iraq would be disarmed, and they did not want to be," he said - Albawaba.com
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
