War’s expansion would be mistake, Arab officials say

BAGHDAD —  Iraq isn’t afraid of American threats and is ready to defend itself against any attack, the Iraqi government said Tuesday.

President Bush had issued a warning Monday that Iraq and North Korea would face consequences if they produce weapons of mass destruction.

He urged Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow arms inspectors back into the country “to prove to the world he is not developing weapons of mass destruction.”

Baghdad has refused until United Nations sanctions are lifted, and some White House advisers are pushing Bush to make Iraq his next target in the war against terrorism.

Iraq said Tuesday it is prepared to defend itself. Iraq “will not be terrified by any arrogant party,” the official Iraqi News Agency quoted a government spokesman as saying.

Warns of `fatal mistake’

In Cairo, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said that “striking against any Arab country will be the end of harmony within the international alliance against terrorism.”

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa said a U.S. attack on any Arab country as part of its war on terrorism would be a “fatal mistake.”

Syria long has been on the State Department’s list of nations suspected of sponsoring terrorism, but it was not singled out in Bush’s warning.

Still, “any threat against an Arab country is rejected, and a military attack against any Arab country will lead to endless problems,” Sharaa said in Lebanon. “America knows that, and Europe knows that. I believe it will be a fatal mistake to harm any Arab country.”

In London, though, a government official said Britain does not support expanding the military campaign beyond Afghanistan without evidence of state involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S.

“This is a military campaign specifically directed against those responsible for the mass murders of Sept. 11,” said Ben Bradshaw, a junior Foreign Office minister.

“There is no evidence of any state involvement and, in the absence of such evidence, those military objectives remain as they have done all along,” Bradshaw told Parliament.

Baghdad’s ambassador to the U.N. said in New York his country wants peaceful relations with the United States. But another Iraqi official took a harder line, saying Iraq is ready to defend itself against any attack.

Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri’s conciliatory comment came as diplomats reported that the U.S. and Russia have agreed to extend the UN humanitarian program for Iraq for six months and commit Security Council members to tackle issues related to overhauling sanctions against Hussein’s government.

A review of U.N. sanctions

At the heart of the compromise is a Russian agreement to work toward approval of a new list of goods that would need UN review before shipment to Iraq, a key feature of the U.S.-British sanctions-overhaul proposal.

At the same time, Washington agreed to Russia’s long-standing demand for discussion of a comprehensive approach to the sanctions against Iraq, diplomats said.

Bush’s indication that Iraq might be the next target of the U.S. war on terrorism has focused renewed attention on the sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The sanctions can be lifted only if UN inspectors determine that Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs and its long-range missiles have been dismantled.

The inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British air strikes in December 1998, and Iraq has barred them from returning.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. military said American and British warplanes bombed a military target in southern Iraq in response to threats to coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone.

The attack took place on a command-and-control site in the province of Nasiriyah, said Chief Petty Officer David Nagle of the Riyadh-based Joint Task Force Southwest Asia.

Nasiriyah is 218 miles southeast of Baghdad. All coalition aircraft returned safely to the base, Nagle said.

An unidentified Iraqi military spokesman told the Iraqi News Agency that the warplanes, coming from Kuwaiti territory, targeted “civil and service installations” in Nasiriyah, injuring one civilian.