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Posted on 10/23/2001 4:29:41 PM PDT by callisto

Iraq Tuesday denied involvement in the anthrax attacks and accused the US administration of spreading anthrax fears to transform its "defeat" in the September 11 terror attacks into a victory in countering alleged bio-terrorism.

"We worked on anthrax in the 1980s," Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz told BBC television when told that Iraq was a suspected source of the anthrax scare.

"(But) in the 1990s, we destroyed all our anthrax assets; they were not of high grade," he said.

"This is very well known because there were (UN) inspections in Iraq for seven and a half years in the 1990s," Aziz said.

"Anthrax exists in many, many countries, including the United States," added the Iraqi official, who again denied Baghdad's involvement in the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Ath-Thawra, mouthpiece of Iraq's ruling Baath Party, said earlier Tuesday that "all evidence" points to the United States as being "the source of the anthrax."

"This anthrax has been prepared in American laboratories and the suspect packages which spread the scare have been sent from inside the United States, and this incriminates the American authorities," the newspaper said.

Ath-Thawra said the "American authorities do not wish to kill Americans, but are seeking to spread a scare around the world to reach their objectives."

The United States "wants to show that its security services have succeeded in uncovering an alleged biological attack in order to make everyone forget its defeat and inability to detect the September 11 attacks on time or to find concrete proof about the perpetrators."

The anthrax scare has deepened around the world after it was confirmed that two US postal workers died of anthrax inhalation.

Iraq's charge d'affaires in Cairo Tuesday also dismissed US media reports linking Baghdad with the anthrax scare, saying Iraq was "above responding to such insults.

"These false accusations are nothing new," Hamam al-Alusi said, quoted by Egypt's MENA news agency. "The whole world knows that Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with this subject."

Last week, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, said to blame Baghdad was irresponsible.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Washington's arch-foe, is the only Arab leader not to have condemned the terror attacks on the United States.

But Aziz insisted on BBC television that Baghdad had "nothing to do" with the attacks and that all claims to the contrary were "a pretext to hurt Iraq."

"No, the world is not after that," Aziz said when asked whether he could assure the world that Iraq is not developing mass destruction weapons.

It is the United States and Britain which are "after that, and they are using that as a pretext (to threaten Iraq)," he said.

Asked whether Baghdad was ready to stand up to another US attack, Aziz said: "We are. We have no choice but to defend our country, our sovereignty and (our territorial) integrity."

And Iraq's message to the United States: "Leave us alone; stop the aggression against Iraq."

OUR ENEMIES LIE; So, What Else Is New?

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