Attack on Iraq 'will be grave mistake', warns Aziz (Filed: 28/10/2001)

In his first newspaper interview since September 11, Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, speaks to Hala Jaber in Baghdad

EVERY week Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, joins Saddam Hussein and other ministers around a polished cabinet table in the ruling Command Council's Baghdad headquarters to decide government policy.

Last week, Mr Aziz sat at the same table and told me why his country was preparing itself for a huge attack from America and Britain. Speaking with the quiet menace of a man preparing, once again, for conflict, he also issued a warning to the West.

America and Britain would face "grave" consequences if they turned their fire on Iraq, he said. Baghdad was aware of plans to strike 300 targets with 1,000 missiles.

He said: "We are watching what is being said and what is being done in America and in Britain and we know that it is just a matter of time before such an attack.

"That is going to be a very grave mistake. The Arab world is not going to tolerate that at all because they know that this is unjust and is sheer aggression."

Mr Aziz, the diplomatic face of the Iraqi government, is not given to the table-thumping rhetoric favoured by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi President, whose eyes, peering out of a portrait, look down upon us in the Cabinet room. The white-haired minister was in a relaxed mood, belying the regime's fear of an imminent attack.

Despite the crystal ashtrays scattered across the table, Mr Aziz refrained from his usual habit of smoking cigars during the hour-and-a-half-long interview, the first he had granted to any newspaper since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Although he spoke quietly, his hands were rarely still.

He insisted that Britain and America were determined to topple Saddam's regime and would use the pretext of waging war against terrorism. Smiling, he waved away claims that Baghdad had been involved in the September attacks as "baseless".

He also laughed off allegations that his country was behind the release of anthrax bacteria in the United States. "This is not only baseless. It is also ridiculous," he said.

He admitted that Iraq developed anthrax in the 1980s, but said that the programme was destroyed in the 1990s during the United Nations inspection and destruction of prohibited weapons in Iraq.

His claims are not supported by Richard Butler, the former head of the UN weapons inspection team, who last week said Iraq retains large stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Mr Aziz said: "When America decides to attack Iraq it will be for their own agenda. It will be because they want to replace this government because it is independent and will not bow. It will not be because of what is happening in the United States, although they might use that as a pretext.

Mr Aziz insisted that Iraq's military machine had recovered since the 1991 Gulf war, during which he was foreign minister.

He sais: "In 1991 there was huge destruction to the country, and, as you have probably seen, now the country is in good shape. This also applies to our armed forces. They are capable and in a position to defend the country."

When asked how Iraq could have rebuilt its military strength while under international sanctions, Mr Aziz smiled and said: "Let us just say there are ways. There is ingenuity in Iraq and its working people are intelligent and determined and we have had very good results."

He denied reports that Mohammed Atta, the alleged leader of the hijackers, had met Ahmad Samir al-Hani, Iraq's consul in Prague, before the attacks.

Last week, the Czech government confirmed that at least one meeting did take place several weeks before Mr al-Hani was expelled on April 22 for conduct "incompatible with his diplomatic status".

Mr Aziz said: "I checked with the diplomat mentioned when I read those allegations against him and I can say categorically that they are false. I know these reports are being published in the American and British press all the time, but they are not true."

When asked if we could meet Mr al-Hani to put these allegations to him Mr Aziz refused. "No," he said fiercely. "He is a junior diplomat and he does not appear for the press. We checked the reports and they are not true."

Mr Aziz also vehemently denied reports that a second Iraqi diplomat, Farouq Hijazi, had met Osama bin Laden, in December 1997 in Afghanistan.

"Farouq Hijazi is our ambassador to Turkey. He has never travelled to Pakistan. How can he go to see bin Laden [in Afghanistan] without crossing Pakistan," he said.

Mr Aziz, who became a familiar face on television during the Gulf war, said that while he did not harbour any expectations of Arab military intervention in case of a US attack against Iraq, he believed that such military action would destroy the coalition that America had painstakingly built since September.

"There won't be Arab military retaliation. Political actions and stances will be taken by the Arabs which will add to the isolation of the United States."

He added: "The American policy against Iraq is almost isolated. They have only Britain as an ally in that policy. No other partner or no other country in the world, especially amongst the members of the Security Council, are fully supporting the Americans in their attitude towards Iraq."

Mr Aziz appeared dubious about reassurances by Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that Britain will not participate in any US attacks against Iraq without absolute proof of its direct involvement in the September 11 attacks.

"I hope they will make a wise judgment. I hope that the British Government will make a calculated judgment, but I cannot be sure that they will not follow suit with the Americans. Up until now, what I am reading and hearing in the British press suggests that they do not want to and I hope that their position will remain so."

Asked whether he saw any differences between the British and US policies towards Iraq, Mr Aziz said: "There are different nuances, of course. The British have their own way of doing things and saying things, but, nevertheless, the British support the core of the American policy against Iraq. I think that the British are more sophisticated than the Americans. Sometimes they follow, but sometimes they are a bit wiser."

Mr Aziz, who is effectively second-in-command to Saddam, said there was little difference between Mr Blair and Margaret Thatcher where Iraq was concerned. He accused Mr Blair of being President Bush's public relation's officer.

Mr Aziz said: "The policy of the British government towards Iraq has not changed whether they were Conservatives or the current Labour governments."

"He [Blair] is doing public relations for the sake of the Americans. His statements to the [Arab and Muslim] population are aimed at trying to control or to contain the general Arab resistance to what is happening in Afghanistan.

He added: "Saddam Hussein is of the same view. He believes that both London and Washington are in alliance against Iraq."

Asked whether the president was in hiding, Mr Aziz laughed. "The president was with us in the cabinet yesterday. He has continued normally with his engagements, he sees his people, meets with officials.

"He is not in hiding and there is no such decision for him or the other officials. I am also an official of the command council and there are eight of us who run this country and I am not in hiding."

Mr Aziz laughed loudly when asked about suggestions by American "hawks", including Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, that a "no-go zone" could be established by ground forces in the Basra oilfields of southern Iraq as part of efforts to replace the Iraqi regime with the London-based opposition.

"The Americans can do that in a movie produced in Hollywood, but they cannot do it on the ground. The Iraqi opposition is a joke. I think that the British Government knows the opposition better than the Americans. The British know them better because the opposition have been living in England for a time and they are really good for nothing."

Laughing, he added that the US would not get far with the Iraqi opposition, just as it would not succeed in supporting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

"The bombing of Afghanistan started on October 7 and today the Northern Alliance is still in the north. It hasn't advanced anywhere. I don't know what the US military plans are, but they have put themselves in this blind situation," he said.

"As an observer and a political analyst, these are my thoughts on the situation: they declared their objectives following the attacks that they have to get bin Laden and to replace the Taliban. These goals as stated cannot be achieved by air attacks.

"If the Americans say they just want to weaken the Taliban and destroy the camps of bin Laden then, yes, this is possible. But when they say 'we have to get bin Laden and bring him to justice' or bring justice to bin Laden as Colin Powell was saying - which means killing him - and also topple the leadership of the Taliban, then they have to fight on the ground, which is what they could not do here in 1991.

"In 1991 they stopped the war because they realised that if they sought to change the government of Iraq, the leadership of Iraq, they would have to fight on the ground - man to man battle - which they usually avoid because they do not want to take losses."

Mr Aziz strongly denied reports that he personally met Osama bin Laden in Baghdad in March 1998. `I read that and to be honest it is ridiculous. We do not know bin Laden in person. We know that he is a Saudi, an Arab and a mujahid. We cannot make a judgment about him. We simply do not know enough about him, only that he fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan and that America helped the mujahideen.

"I do not know whether America helped him personally as well. I don't know whether they had connections with him or not at that time."

Mr Aziz, a Roman Catholic, added: "We have our own ideology and our own political system, which stipulates that while Iraq is a Muslim nation and a Muslim state and that the people of Iraq are believers - as I am, even though I am a Christian - we cannot mingle religion with the affairs of the state."

Mr Aziz said that Saddam Hussein had "contemplated" long and hard before issuing his two statements following the September 11 attacks in which he blamed the United States foreign policy for the tragedy that befell it.

"He contemplated deeply before issuing the two statements in which he advised the Americans to consider why so many people hate their country and are ready to kill themselves to make their point heard.

"While we do not condone all the reasons or the means used, there is a real, a real, hatred for the United States because of Palestine and because of Iraq."

Mr Aziz said that he was having his daily walk in the garden of his home at the same time as the suicide attackers flew the three passenger aircraft into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre.

"My eldest daughter, Zeinab, came and told me that the World Trade Centre had gone up. I went upstairs and watched Iraqi television. We did not get it immediately because we don't have a satellite dish. It then appeared that it was not just a bomb or an explosion.

"It was really strange, a completely strange event without any similar precedent. Everybody was amazed and shocked to see this amazing scene of planes attacking the skyscrapers. It had never happened before. Honestly, we do not condone the killing of innocent civilians," he said.

Mr Aziz also said Baghdad would not allow UN weapons inspectors to return to investigate the country's past biological, chemical, missile and nuclear weapons programmes. "No, they cannot return," he said. "The question is why? Why should they return? Are there any inspectors in Israel? Are there inspectors in Iran? Are there inspectors in other countries of the region?

"We had inspectors for seven and a half years and they did a very bad job, they spied on Iraq and they proved not to be honest, but cheap spies and liars. So we do not need them and won't have them."

He accused the United States and Britain of trying to force the return of the inspectors as a means of undermining the Iraqi regime.

He said: "We do not trust them. We do not trust them because the main objective of the United States is not to get the inspectors in but to topple the government."

-- (america@chickening.out), October 28, 2001