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<<In Saddam Hussein's Words: It's for Oil
following are excerpts from a letter to the United Nations General Assembly from President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, as presented orally yesterday and recorded by The New York Times:
. . . It is a good sign that the United States has resorted, for the first time after the end of the cold war, to the General Assembly to put forward one of its problems, after years of disregard to the weight, effect and opinion of others. . . .
Nevertheless, the U.S. president revealed his basic purpose when he jumped to the issue of Iraq. . . . He portrayed this issue as if it were the most dangerous situation, not only for the life, security and future of the United States, but for the life, future and security of the whole world.
Among his generalizations, which implied deliberate insinuations, he presented the utmost distoritions on the nuclear, biological and chemical threats, so as to make American citizens believe the deliberate insinuation that Iraq was linked to the American people's tragedy of Sept. 11. . . . The U.S. president talked about the importance of applying democracy by the government of Iraq. 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 1.7 million innocent Iraqis, out of a population of 25 million citizens. . . .
Now that Iraq has accepted the return of the U.N. inspectors, we will all be able to see how they work. In our past experience (1991-1998) with them, Iraq used to ask 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. Some of those inspectors have publicly admitted this; some, including an American, are still publicly talking about it. . . .
In targeting Iraq, the United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism, which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children and seeking to impose their domination on the whole world, not only militarily, but also economically and politically.
The U.S. 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. If it succeeded in that, God forbid, it would dictate on you what each country needs for its economic development, what quantities of oil it is allowed to buy, and at what prices, along with other conditions. . . .
Iraq has not rejected relevant resolutions of the Security Council, even though what relates to Iraq in them is unjust and at odds with the U.N. Charter and international law.
Iraq, rather, calls on members of the Security Council, and on the U.S. administration in particular, to respect their own obligations under the Charter, international law and the relevant Security Council resolutions. . . .
I hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. If there are any one amongst you who might still worry that the fabrications announced by American officials about Iraq may possibly be true, our country is ready to receive any scientific experts accompanied by politicians you choose to represent any one of your countries to tell us which places and scientific and industrial installations they would wish to see, particularly those about which the American officials have been fabricating false stories. . . .>> |
