Iraq to lobby for U.N. support

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq plans to make a case to the United Nations that it is not the threat the United States has portrayed it to be, officials said Thursday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri will fly to New York on Friday to address the U.N. General Assembly, where he will try to lobby support for his country's case.

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President Bush spoke Thursday morning at the United Nations, challenging the international agency to force Iraq to comply with disarmament pledges after a "decade of defiance." (Full story)

Iraqi officials said Saddam Hussein's government wants to deal with the issue of allowing weapons inspectors back to the country -- but only if it would be part of a process that would include lifting U.N. sanctions imposed for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The Iraqi government said it doesn't want a war with the United States but will fight if there is one.

Iraqis "will fight to defend their own land, to defend their own freedom against colonialist invaders," Sabri said.

"The ones who decide the war are the warmongers in Washington. The warmongers whose business is war, whose business is exporting killing and death to other parts of the world," Sabri said. "These are the ones who decide the war agenda, not Iraq.

"Iraq is the victim of these threats. We have done nothing to provoke the United States; we have done ... no harm whatsoever to American interests," he said.

"There are rumors that have been created by these extremist elements, extremist persons in the U.S. administration against Iraq."

The Bush administration, which has accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and North Korea, has been considering military action to topple Saddam's regime. The administration contends the United States has evidence Iraq is aggressively trying to revive its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Iraqis said they cooperated with U.N. weapons inspectors in the 1990s. They said they have complied with U.N. resolutions and destroyed weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq allowed weapons inspectors in after the Persian Gulf War, but inspectors left in 1998 and have not been allowed back.

Iraq is willing to engage in a dialogue with the United Nations about allowing inspectors back, officials said, but they will cooperate only if there are clear guidelines on what the inspectors want, where they want to go and what they plan to verify.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan repeated his call for Iraq to allow the return of inspectors, but he warned that no U.N. member nation "large or small" should act alone on major global issues as "a simple matter of political convenience." (Full story)