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CNN Live Sunday

Ritter Meets With Iraqi Leaders

Aired September 08, 2002 - 17:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: A critic of threatened military action against Iraq says the U.S. is on the verge of making a huge mistake. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter says Iraq is not a threat. He met with leaders in Baghdad today. CNN's James Martone has more on Ritter's mission.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMES MARTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The former chief U.N. inspector is in town to diffuse a crisis, prevent a war, he says. The name Scott Ritter is well known in Iraq where he served as a U.N. weapons inspector for seven years.

TARIQ AZIZ, IRAQI DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: This is the building which Scott Ritter wanted to inspect.

MARTONE: Ritter was not well liked. This is Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in December, 1997 leading journalists through a presidential palace Scott Ritter tried to inspect.

It was behavior such as this, said Iraqi officials at the time that led to the inspections being stopped and eventually to a 1998 bombing campaign by the U.S. Ritter has since said his inspection team was breaking U.N. rules by providing intelligence to the U.S. He addressed Iraq's National Assembly Sunday.

SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. INSPECTOR: Many in the international community understand that Iraq suffered from an abuse of the Security Council's mandate regarding inspections in the past, and that under the current situation in which Iraq finds itself threatened by attack, the Iraqi government would not readily exceed to any situation that permitted such inspections to return to work inside Iraq.

MARTONE: And since Ritter left Baghdad, there have been no inspections. The U.N. says that since 1998, Iraq has refused to allow weapons inspectors into the country, demanding that economic sanctions be lifted first, and Ritter's conclusions are far from universally accepted. The Bush administration is convinced that Saddam Hussein is still trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

RICE: We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance - into Iraq, for instance of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to - high quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. MARTONE: Scott Ritter told the Iraqi Parliament that only "an immediate and unconditional return of the U.N. weapons inspections" could save Iraq from what he called a post September 11 U.S. policy of fear calling for the addition of outside observers to monitor the process.

Mr. Ritter also called on Iraq to "embrace the American people especially now in their time of sorrow and pain." He said he knew Iraq was innocent of the terror attacks of September 11 as well as developing weapons of mass destruction.

(on camera): But he said Baghdad must prove it by adopting "a more welcoming posture" to dispel any efforts to cast Iraq as a nation worth going to war over.

James Martone, CNN, Baghdad.

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