Iraqis Hope for Peace after Baghdad Accepts UN Resolution

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 15, 2002

Iraqis Hope for Peace after Baghdad Accepts UN Resolution

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Many Iraqis, cautiously relieved at government's acceptance of the UN resolution 1441 providing for disarming the country, Thursday voiced their hope for lasting peace, although a leading newspaper warned that more problems might "have just started."

"It's a wise decision made by our leadership and I hope the movewould bring peace to Iraq since the United States has nothing to say now," said Abu Ashraf, a shopkeeper selling auto parts in Baghdad's upscale Mansur district.

"We have had enough of the war threats (by the United States)," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Any way, our acceptance makes the possibility of war retreat, at least for some time," he added.

Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), chaired by President Saddam Hussein, on Wednesday agreed to accept the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 aimed at enforcing Iraq's elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to inform him of the decision, saying "the lies and manipulations" of the United States and Britain would be exposed if Iraq allows UN arms inspectors back.

"Iraqis hope the acceptance of the resolution would avert a destructive war which the United States has been threatening to launch against Iraq, under the pretext that Iraq evades its commitment of disarmament," said Abdul Wahab, a retired Iraq's professor.

"But it's just a hope. What is really important and unpredictable would happen after the inspectors return," he added.

An advance team of UN weapons inspectors, led by chief inspectorHans Blix, is expected to be back in Iraq as early as next Monday.

Iraq has been under sweeping UN sanctions since its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the embargo will not be lifted until the United Nations verifies that Iraq has eliminated all of its weaponsof mass destruction and means of launch them.

Continuous spats about alleged espionage activities between Iraqand the UN arms inspectors, who were commissioned to verify that Iraq has been disarmed, led to crisis in 1997 and 1998, and eventually the air war against Baghdad from Dec. 17-19, 1998.

The inspectors have since been barred from entering Iraq again.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by all 15 council members on Friday, instructs Blix and the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin inspections within 45 days with a powerful new mandate.

It also requires Iraq provide, not later than 30 days, a "currently accurate, full and complete" declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and systems to deliver them.

"Further material breach" of Iraq's obligations would incur "serious consequences," the resolution warned.

However, Iraq has also warned that the inspectors' behaviors should be monitored, urging the United Nations not to yield to US pressures.

Everyone would be sure that Iraq has not developed weapons of mass destruction "if their (the UN inspectors') way of conduct is supervised so that it becomes legal and professional," Sabri told Annan in the letter.

If "the whims of American administration" were given the chance to "play and tamper with the inspection teams or some of their members ... the resulting commotion will distort the facts and pushthe situation into dangerous directions," Sabri said.

A Iraqi popular Babel newspaper on Thursday urged, in its front-page editorial, that "Security Council members, especially Russia, China and France, must recognize that our problems with the United States and Britain are not over yet and may have just started."

The newspaper is run by Uday Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president's elder son.

"Our wise leadership has realized, since the very beginning, theill intentions and goals of the American administration that exploited the Security Council's weakness and the (UN) Secretary-General's response to the American pressures," it worried.

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