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Saddam's letter to U.N. says U.S. wants oil
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri denied U.S. accusations that Iraq has nuclear, chemical or biological weapons during a speech Thursday before the United Nations General Assembly, and accused U.S. President George W. Bush of using the terror attacks of September 11 as an excuse to strike Iraq. Reading a letter from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the world body, Sabri said the Bush administration "wants to destroy Iraq in order to control the Middle East oil and consequently control the politics as well as the oil and economic policies of the whole world." Bush last week called on the United Nations to enforce its resolutions made after the 1991 Persian Gulf War that mandated Iraq to disarm, saying the organization's relevance in world affairs was at stake. "I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons," Sabri said, a statement that was quickly rejected by the White House. "That is categorically a lie," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who described the speech as "more of the same" from Iraq and "was a disappointment and a failure in every respect." Earlier Thursday in Washington, Bush met at the White House with top aides, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who briefed him on the status of U.S. efforts to secure a consensus on Iraq at the United Nations. Bush called on the U.N. Security Council to pass a directive outlining what Iraq must do to comply with earlier resolutions requiring its disarmament. "The United Nations Security Council must work with the United States and Britain and other concerned parties to send a clear message that we expect Saddam Hussein to disarm -- and if the United Nations does not deal with the problem, the United States and some of its friends will," he said. Iraq has offered to allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors. "Now that Iraq has accepted the return of U.N. inspectors, we will all be able to see how they work," Sabri read. "In our past experience with them -- 1991-1998 -- Iraq used to ask some of the inspection teams to do their job in accordance with the declared goals of the Security Council -- but some of the inspectors went on doing intelligence and espionage work that had nothing to do with the official mandate of the inspection teams." Fleischer said Iraq was "already putting up conditions for the weapons inspectors that they said, only two days ago, they would accept unconditionally. When Iraq talks about sovereignty and independence history has shown that those are code words for thwarting the inspectors." The letter also accused Bush of portraying his proposal to oust Saddam's regime in a false light. "He pretended to care for the people of Iraq after he and other presidents before him have killed by the use of weapons, including depleted uranium, and by the blockade which is now more than 12 years old, more than 1 million and 700,000 innocent Iraqis out of a population of 25 million citizens," Sabri read. "So after a long time of utilizing the American propaganda machine, along with official statements of lies, distortion and falsehood, the focus was basically turned on inciting the American public against Iraq and pushing them to accept the American administration's schemes of aggression as a fait accompli, as if it were the solution or the necessary rescue that would allow American citizens to live in security and stability, after what they had gone through in the September 11 attacks."
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