Iraq's arms program chief invited the US administration yesterday to inspect two alleged secret weapons sites, shortly before Baghdad reported a fresh US air strike on a southern airport.
US warplanes attacked Basra international airport, destroying its radar system and damaging buildings used by passengers, in the third strike on the facility since last month, an official spokesman told state television. No casualties have been reported.
"The American administration can send whoever it wants to visit the An-Nasr and Al-Furat sites, which it suspects of being used to produce weapons of mass destruction," Abdel Tawab Mulla Howeish told a Baghdad press conference.
"If the American administration wants to see the two sites, we urge them to inspect them immediately," said Howeish, who is also Iraq's military industries minister.
The two sites were named in a dossier British Prime Minister Tony Blair has released on Iraq's arsenal, while US President George W. Bush showed a satellite photograph of Al-Furat in a speech this week while threatening to disarm Baghdad by force, if necessary.
"All we have done is rebuild the An-Nasr site without enlarging it, while we have undertaken no work at the Al-Furat site, which was being constructed when it was destroyed in 1991 and which was never used," Howeish said.
"We do not have weapons of mass destruction. We do not have programs or plans to produce them and we have not violated UN Security Council resolutions relating to this issue in the absence of inspectors," stressed Howeish.
After the press conference, Iraqi authorities took journalists on a tour of the two sites.
On Sept. 16, Iraq accepted the unconditional return of UN weap-ons inspectors after a hiatus of nearly four years.
But the inspectors' mission is on hold while Washington and London wrangle with the other three permanent members of the Security Council over the need for a tough new resolution.
But the US Congress was still mobilizing for possible war.
The House of Representatives was expected to vote yesterday to authorize Bush to unilaterally go to war if the UN fails to rid Iraq of its alleged mass destruction weapons.
The House was scheduled to vote between 6pm and 8pm, according to a spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert.
Meanwhile, The London Times reported yesterday that 52 bishops of the Church of England had warned that war against Iraq without further backing from the UN was unacceptable.
"We nonetheless hold that to undertake a preventive war at this juncture would be to lower the threshold for war unacceptably," The Times quoted the churchmen as saying in a church document.
In talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Wednesday, Iran's President Mohammad Khatami voiced doubts over the threat posed by Saddam and hit out at the West for supplying Iraq with chemical arms in the first place.
Accusing US leaders of "arrogance and haste," Khatami warned Straw the US' "political conduct can only result in the strengthening of extremist movements' activities in the Islamic world."
Straw visited four countries in a bid to rally their support for the British-backed US tough line on Iraq.
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