Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassine Ramadan said Monday that Baghdad remains opposed to any revised regime of sanctions slapped on the country 11 years ago after its invasion of Kuwait, AFP said.
"US efforts in the UN Security Council, which has become simply a tool of the Americans, to impose (the so-called 'smart' sanctions) are destined to fail," he told reporters in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday he was ready to resume talks with Iraq on the lifting of the UN's sanctions regime if Baghdad presented new proposals.
"If the Iraqi foreign minister were to come with some suggestions and proposals, obviously I am prepared to discuss with him and sit down with him," Annan told reporters in New York.
Iraq's newly appointed foreign minister, Naji Sabri, is expected to attend the annual general debate of the United Nations General Assembly which begins on September 24, and is scheduled to speak on October 3.
Sabri will be the first senior Iraqi official to visit UN headquarters since February 26, when Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, then foreign minister, met Annan to discuss the stalemate over sanctions.
A US-backed British proposal to overhaul the sanctions regime was shelved by the council in early July due to Russian opposition.
On Monday, Iraq announced that eight civilians were killed and three others injured in US and British airstrikes on northern Iraq.
The raids hit Salhiya region, in Wassel province, around 170 kilometres (105 miles) south of Baghdad, INA said, blasting "another savage attack by the United States and Britain against Iraqi citizens," according to AFP.
"Enemy US and British planes fired three missiles and some cluster bombs," the agency reported, quoting witnesses as saying "the victims had been preparing for prayers."
According to INA, palm groves in Salhiya were also destroyed in the attack.
The deaths take to 365 the number of people Baghdad says have been killed in US-British raids since December 1998.
British and US warplanes patrol no-fly zones imposed over northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the regions' Kurdish and Shiite Muslim populations from Baghdad.
The attack came aims US reports that Iraq is upgrading its military technology and developing weapons of mass destruction in the absence of international monitoring.
The US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was quoted by reports as saying that Iraqi efforts were gathering pace since UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in late 1998.
"They have an appetite for weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld told Fox television.
"They have been, every period since they have been able to get the inspectors out of there, working diligently to increase their capabilities in every aspect of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology. And as they get somewhat stronger, the problem becomes somewhat greater."
"And that problem, particularly biological weapons, over the coming decade is going to be an increasingly serious one," he said.
Airstrikes have limited effectiveness against sites where the weapons are developed or deployed, Rumsfeld said, because some of those sites are underground or mobile.
The problem "will have to be attacked from a whole range of methods," he said.
"To the extent other countries keep trading with him and improving his fiber optics and improving his ability to cue and network, the risk level goes up," Rumsfeld told CNN television later Sunday.
"And then the United States and (Britain) are forced to go in and take out those capabilities."
US and British warplanes have carried out four other attacks on Iraqi air defenses since 25 August to enforce the no-fly zones imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.
The zones are not mandated by any UN Security Council resolution – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
