Khaleej Times 7/29/02
BAGHDAD - Baghdad called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday
to send a team to Iraq to check accusations it was seeking to acquire
nuclear warheads to add to its chemical weapons capability and suspected
germ warfare stockpiles.
"If the British prime minister wants to prove his allegations,
our offer is still valid," a spokesman at Iraq's foreign ministry
said in a statement. Baghdad proposed last February that Blair send a
fact-finding team to "show how and where Iraq is trying to produce
weapons of mass destruction," the spokesman said.
"We defy him to come up with one bit of proof, but he is
incapable of it," he said, accusing London of "increasing
fears of suspected Iraqi weapons of mass destruction while deliberately
ignoring those of the Zionist entity, which has 400 nuclear
warheads." The spokesman blasted Blair's "blind following of
the extremists at the heart of the US administration," reiterating
that "Iraq is not planning to join the club of (countries
possessing) weapons of mass destruction."