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American Morning
Iraq Sending Mixed Messages
Aired December 05, 2002 - 07:13 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is calling the U.N. inspections a welcome opportunity, actually. He's saying it could disprove U.S. charges about the country's arsenal and protect its people.
But yesterday, Iraq's vice president accused the U.N. team of spying.
Rym Brahimi is in Baghdad. She has the latest now.
Rym -- is Saddam trying to make up for his vice president's statement?
RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it doesn't seem that he's necessarily trying to make up for it. What is going on is basically they're both being consistent with what they have said for the past few weeks and maybe months. The president probably knows that his comments will not only be addressed to the Iraqi people, but will come out the rest of the world.
So, he is trying to strike maybe a conciliatory tone, saying that it's important that the inspectors are allowed to do their work, because that will eventually allow Iraq to come clean in the face of the world, and also to prove that it doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction.
Now, that's what he has said all along. It's also what he told Iraqis at the time that he agreed to allow inspectors back in, at the time that he accepted the Resolution 1441 that calls for all of these new, tough inspections.
His vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan, is quite well-known here to be more of the hard-liner within the Iraqi leadership. He was someone that, Daryn, he was saying a few months ago only that the inspectors would never come back. So, his hard-line is hardly surprising.
The other thing is also we have to bear in mind, he was addressing a purely Arab audience when he said that. It wasn't something that was necessarily meant to come out in public. And that's also maybe something we need to take into account.
Now, both of these comments, probably if you put them together, will give us an idea of what people are thinking here, what Iraqi officials, but also many ordinary Iraqis are saying, which is basically that there is a feeling that the U.S. does want to attack Iraq. They believe that the United States will probably try to use the inspectors as spies, as they said -- as they had accused them of doing during the previous round of inspections that lasted seven years. So, there's a lot of fear that that will happen.
Now, the inspectors are under a lot of pressure, but they seem to be resisting that. And today, is the Eid that marks as the holy holiday here. It marks the end of Ramadan, so it's a big Muslim feast. Many people here are out celebrating in the streets, and the inspectors are not going out either today or tomorrow -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Rym Brahimi in Baghdad -- Rym, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired December 5, 2002 - 07:13 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is calling the U.N. inspections a welcome opportunity, actually. He's saying it could disprove U.S. charges about the country's arsenal and protect its people.
But yesterday, Iraq's vice president accused the U.N. team of spying.
Rym Brahimi is in Baghdad. She has the latest now.
Rym -- is Saddam trying to make up for his vice president's statement?
RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it doesn't seem that he's necessarily trying to make up for it. What is going on is basically they're both being consistent with what they have said for the past few weeks and maybe months. The president probably knows that his comments will not only be addressed to the Iraqi people, but will come out the rest of the world.
So, he is trying to strike maybe a conciliatory tone, saying that it's important that the inspectors are allowed to do their work, because that will eventually allow Iraq to come clean in the face of the world, and also to prove that it doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction.
Now, that's what he has said all along. It's also what he told Iraqis at the time that he agreed to allow inspectors back in, at the time that he accepted the Resolution 1441 that calls for all of these new, tough inspections.
His vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan, is quite well-known here to be more of the hard-liner within the Iraqi leadership. He was someone that, Daryn, he was saying a few months ago only that the inspectors would never come back. So, his hard-line is hardly surprising.
The other thing is also we have to bear in mind, he was addressing a purely Arab audience when he said that. It wasn't something that was necessarily meant to come out in public. And that's also maybe something we need to take into account.
Now, both of these comments, probably if you put them together, will give us an idea of what people are thinking here, what Iraqi officials, but also many ordinary Iraqis are saying, which is basically that there is a feeling that the U.S. does want to attack Iraq. They believe that the United States will probably try to use the inspectors as spies, as they said -- as they had accused them of doing during the previous round of inspections that lasted seven years. So, there's a lot of fear that that will happen.
Now, the inspectors are under a lot of pressure, but they seem to be resisting that. And today, is the Eid that marks as the holy holiday here. It marks the end of Ramadan, so it's a big Muslim feast. Many people here are out celebrating in the streets, and the inspectors are not going out either today or tomorrow -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Rym Brahimi in Baghdad -- Rym, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
