Reuters

Dec. 4

— BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a blistering attack, on Wednesday accused U.N. inspectors hunting for banned weapons in Iraq of being U.S. and Israeli spies.

"The inspectors have come to provide better circumstances and more precise information for a coming aggression," Ramadan said at a meeting with an Egyptian delegation in a Baghdad hotel. "This is not an accusation, because the inspectors, from day one, their foremost work was spying.

"Their work was spying for the CIA and Mossad together," added Ramadan, referring to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

Ramadan said the inspection by the U.N. experts of one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad on Tuesday amounted to provocation.

"They were looking for a pretext so that we would tell them not to go in, and they would say that this is a material breach" of U.N. resolution 1441, he said. The inspectors have been searching for banned weapons in Iraq for the past week, armed with the tough Security Council resolution which gives Baghdad a last chance to disarm or face war.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2002