Iraq condemns Security Council statement on inspections

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz has condemned a UN Security Council statement on Monday which called on Iraq to allow full access to UN weapons inspectors, Iraqi TV reported on Tuesday.

"The Security Council statement yesterday reflects once again the blackmail the United States exercises against the Council to make it adopt biased and unbalanced stands," a statement by Aziz said, quoted by the television.

"The United States seeks to have the Council devote its efforts to inspection issues within the framework of its plan to divert attention from the crucial issue, represented in the lifting of the unjust embargo from Iraq, to secondary issues which the United States and other UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) members fabricate." Aziz said inspectors had carried out operations in recent days, some to previously inspected sites where UNSCOM had not found anything, which showed "the falsehood of UNSCOM's claims on the concealment of weapons." The UN Security Council should ask UNSCOM about the sources for its "trivial and false information" , Aziz said.

"The Americans are controlling UNSCOM and using it for their own purposes.

In the recent crisis, we called for restoring balance to the structure of this Commission and to its method of operations.

"Since this balance has not been achieved yet, the UNSCOM will remain a US tool that serves US policy.

All requirements of Paragraph 22 have been fulfilled.

When UNSCOM denies this, then it is not telling the truth." Aziz urged the Security Council to adopt "an objective and balanced approach" and to immediately act to lift the embargo against Iraq, the TV said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.