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Iraq berates Clinton

on sanctions

BAGHDAD: Iraq accused President Bill Clinton on Thursday of being hysterical, unbalanced, naive and slanderous for saying the United States would keep sanctions on Baghdad until it adhered to post-Gulf War U.N. resolutions.

"What is this senseless and feverish jabber?" the ruling Baath party newspaper said of Clinton's remarks, which were similarly mocked and berated in other Iraqi newspapers.

Clinton said in a letter to Congress that Iraq under President Saddam Hussein still posed an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United Satates.

He said Baghdad, five years after invading Kuwait, had not accounted for missing Kuwaitis, failed to return Kuwaiti property and practised widespread human rights violations.

"Apparently, Clinton had lost his balance...and was gripped by hysterical fits as he wrote his periodic letter to Congress," declared the official al-Iraq newspaper.

"Thus his letter was full of falsifications, its expressions and words showing a nervous disorder as they echoed naive accusations and lies," the paper added.

The official al-Qadissiya described Clinton's remarks as "a slanderous attack" on Iraq.

"We in Iraq do not regard these cheap lies directed by Clinton against Iraq in his letter to Congress as proof of strength in the American administration's foreign policy.

"On the contrary it is an indication of failure, exposing the weakness and isolation of this administration," it said.

Al-Iraq said the points raised by Clinton disclosed "the extent of his naivete and the oddness of his argument."

How could Clinton say Iraq was a threat to U.S. security when Iraqis were crippled by U.N. sanctions after being subjected to "the most vicious military aggression in man's history" during the 1991 Gulf War, it asked.

The attacks were Iraq's second verbal assault on the United States in two days.

On Wednesday it described America as "the empire of evil" in newspaper comments marking the fifth anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Clinton's letter dampened Iraqi hopes for an easing of sanctions once the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which is implementing Gulf War ceasefire terms, reports to the Security Council that Baghdad has honoured obligations to curb weapons of mass destruction.

UNSCOM chairman Rolf Ekeus is visiting Iraq on Friday in a bid to collect what Iraq says is a comprehensive disclosure of germ warfare reseach, the last stumbling block on the path to compliance with U.N. demands on weapons.

Iraq has vowed to halt cooperation with Ekeus's commission if his efforts do not lead to a lifting of the ban on Iraqi oil exports.-Reuter