gelatik
09.03.02, 02:14
BAGHDAD, March 7 - Turkey urged the United States Thursday to quell Israeli
violence instead of pondering military moves on Iraq, Anatolia news agency
reported. "Rather than opening an unnecessary war against Iraq, the rapidly
escalating war between Israel and Palestine should be ended," it quoted Turkish
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit saying, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He said any military action against the regime of Saddam Hussein would
be "absolutely unnecessary," even if Baghdad remains opposed to the return of
UN arms inspectors. Ecevit reiterated that under the existing international
sanctions, Iraq was incapable of posing a threat to stability in the region.
Ecevit said turmoil in Iraq would deal a serious blow to the Turkish economy,
particularly the vital tourism sector, as the crisis-hit country strives to
recover with IMF support.
Turkey's renewed objections to a strike on its southern neighbor ahead of a
visit to Ankara by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney later this month. Turkey
also fears instability in Iraq could lead to the emergence of a Kurdish state
in mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, which has been outside Baghdad's control since
the 1991 Gulf War.
Turkish support would be crucial for the U.S. if it decides to strike Iraq,
just as in the 1991 Gulf War when U.S. jets used bases in southern Turkey to
launch bombing raids on Baghdad. The Incirlik base is already host to U.S. and
British jets enforcing the northern no-fly zone over Iraq.
The Turkish move comes after the United States Wednesday upstaged talks
Wednesday between the UN and Iraq by releasing pictures allegedly showing that
Iraq had diverted vehicles from a UN humanitarian program to its army. The
pictures, a mix of satellite photos, videoclips and Iraqi television footage,
were shown to members of the Security Council committee that monitors UN
sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The committee met on the eve of talks between UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. The talks are expected to focus on the
council's demand that UN inspectors be allowed to resume work to assess Iraq's
claim that it dismantled its weapons of mass destruction after being forced out
of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
Robert Wood, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said the
pictures showed hundreds of trucks, imported under the UN oil-for-food program,
which had been "diverted and converted to carry heavy artillery", AFP reported.
Some of the trucks appeared to have been stripped for spare parts, notably
their hydraulic systems, which "can be used as part of a missile component,"
Wood told reporters outside the committee chamber.
Others, including "Ural-type vehicles" were filmed towing 150-millimeter
howitzers in a military parade in Baghdad on December 31, 2001 he said. "All
this is in violation of UN resolutions," he added. Other diplomats were less
categorical.
The United States, backed by Britain, has dropped broad hints that it will take
military action against Iraq unless UN weapons inspectors are allowed back into
the country to check that Baghdad no longer has weapons of mass destruction.
UN arms inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 amid deadlock with
Baghdad. Their withdrawal was followed by a U.S. and British bombing blitz. The
international community regularly accuses Iraq of hiding or developing such
weapons, while Baghdad has insisted several times since the 1991 Gulf War that
it has destroyed them.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who has described Iraq as being part of an "axis
of evil" along with Iran and North Korea, is due to meet British Prime Minister
Tony Blair next month to discuss what action to take against Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Iraq has prepared for a certain military attack by U.S. and British
forces, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said in comments published
Thursday. "U.S. and British attacks are expected... and we have taken the
necessary preparations to face up to them," Aziz told a forum on Iraqi-Lebanese
relations late Wednesday, AFP reported.
The Iraqi cabinet, which met under President Saddam Hussein's leadership
Wednesday, "studied the issue for many hours as well as the preparations to
face up to attacks," Aziz added. Washington and London "are threatening Iraq
with new and extensive attacks, adding to what the country has already been
through," Aziz said.
In an interview with IslamOnline, Egyptian military expert and former army
Major General, Hossam Sweilam, claimed “no one can deny that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction capabilities.” The most obvious proof of this, Sweilam
alleged, was when General Hussein Kamel, chief of Iraq's secret weapons
procurement program, left Baghdad in August 1995, defected to Jordan and
divulged supposed military secrets to Western intelligence. He later returned
but was killed shortly afterwards in an army mortar attack on his home.
Kamel supposedly disclosed evidence to prove that Saddam was hiding chemical
and biological weapons as well as projectiles, artillery shields and missile
warheads, adding that the Iraqi president would not launch them unless his
regime was threatened. “The Iraqis themselves who fled to the United States and
Europe disclosed similar information such as Iraq’s possession of uranium 235,”
Sweilam added.
“These weapons are capable of annihilating people by thousands and millions.
But it is difficult for a United Nations body to discover places of weapons of
mass destruction because they are distributed in different areas all over
Iraq,” Sweilam claimed.
According to Sweilam, it is therefore not strange to hear Tarek Aziz
threatening to use the country’s military capabilities that already exist to
resist any external attacks or threats on the Iraqi regime.
“Saddam will use these weapons of mass destruction against the American
interests in the region, whereby it could strike countries supporting the U.S.
such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates or Qatar which has the biggest
American base in the Middle East. The result will be horrible for the area and
America will repulse,” he added.
