OIL BEHIND ANNIHILATION PLAN, WARNS EX-UN OFFICIAL
Former UN official Denis Halliday warned in Baghdad today that the United States and Britain were ready to "annihilate" Iraqi society in order to control the country's oil wealth.
The comments come amid reports that the Bush administration is to give the weapons inspectors more time before launching a strike against Iraq.
Halliday told a press conference: "The United States and Britain are proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry.
"Washington has informed us that the very security of America require ever-increasing quantities of oil and the source of that oil can only be the Middle East," he said.
Halliday said that since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, "the relationship between Washington and Saudi Arabia has become fragile, therefore making that massive flow of cheap oil insecure."
"Iraq constitutes one very large reserve tank -- a tank of some 120 billion barrels -- and control of that tank has become paramount for the very survival of American economic superiority," he charged.
Halliday, an Irishman, was based in Baghdad between August 1997 and October 1998. He resigned in protest at continued UN sanctions against Iraq in place since its 1990 invasion of neighbouring Kuwait.
"The United Nations has cruelly damaged the social, economic and cultural rights of the Iraqi people under sanctions for over 12 years. We have allowed massive loss of life," he said.
Halliday, who was due to meet with deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz and foreign minister Naji Sabri, said that his "impression" from talking to Iraqi officials is that they believed war "cannot be stopped".
"My impression from talking to colleagues and friends from the government here in Baghdad is that they are confident that it (war) cannot be stopped," he said.
"I sense the priority is moving from finding ways to satisfy the United Nations or perhaps Washington and London, moving toward preparing for what looks like an inevitable war," he added.
France is undermining US to protect oil interests: Pentagon adviser Meanwhile US Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said today that France was seeking to undermine US leadership in the showdown with Iraq to protect its commercial interest in Iraqi oil.
Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, slammed France and Germany for their opposition to President George W Bush's hard line on Iraq.
He told Fox News television French President Jacques Chirac "has a long-standing predisposition to be friendly to Saddam Hussein, and the French government has commercial interests to protect in Iraq: oil," he said.
Perle, a conservative Republican, added: "It's ironic that people accuse the United States of being interested in oil.
"If you want to see who's interested in oil, look at French policy.
"It is entirely self-concerned, and it has to do with oil contracts and very little else."
Iraq has more than 10 per cent of the world's oil reserves and France was heavily involved in the Iraqi industry before the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of international sanctions.
"The French have an attitude toward the United States, toward their role in Europe, toward the role of the United States in Europe in which they clearly want to diminish the significance, the importance, the leadership of the United States," Perle said.
"Every French action points in that direction, so no-one should be surprised that the French are trying to exploit this very difficult situation for rather narrow and unworthy French purposes."
But the Ronald Reagan-era assistant secretary of defence said France could still change its attitude in the showdown with Iraq.
"I wouldn't be at all surprised if France comes around at the last minute," he said in the interview.
France has insisted that military action to disarm Iraq is not yet justified and weapons inspectors should be given more time. Germany has taken an even tougher stance, with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declaring his country will never support or join military action.
Perle said "the Germans have essentially put themselves out of this game by arguing, as the German chancellor did, that, even if the United Nations were to sanction a military action, Germany will have nothing to do with it.
"So the German chancellor should do us all a favour and stop talking about an issue that he has taken himself out of completely."
Perle last year called for Schroeder's resignation because of his opposition to war, which Schroeder turned into major issues for the German elections last September.
Perle, who also serves as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, said: "I think there are some people for whom (Bush) will never make the case, because they are unalterably opposed to taking effective action against Saddam Hussein."
He said Bush had made a case for action against the Iraqi leader "very clearly" and Saddam would not be disarmed "by any means other than the use of force".