Accusations Don’t Surprise Iraq

Iraq played no role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and has no connection with the rash of anthrax incidents--but has no intention of helping America figure out who was responsible, Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz said Wednesday.

Aziz told two U.S. journalists that after more than a decade of being at odds with the United States, he isn’t surprised by a rush to judgment against Iraq. But he said that to accuse his country is to misunderstand its ideological foundation, which rejects Islamic fundamentalism as practiced by the United States’ top suspect in the attacks, Osama bin Laden, as well as the practical strides it has made in recent years toward improving its position in the world.

“Whatever happens in the United States, someone would raise his finger and point to Iraq,” Aziz said as he casually puffed a cigar during his first lengthy interview with the Western media since the attacks. “We don’t like this kind of agitation against Iraq. These are cheap, baseless, ridiculous accusations. How can we do these things? Why?”

In the days immediately after the attacks, some analysts and policymakers speculated that the operation was so massive in scope and so expertly orchestrated that a terror network such as Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda would have needed the assistance of a state to pull it off. And some influential voices in Washington and London have argued that Iraq must have been that state.

No proof linking Baghdad to the attacks has been presented by the White House or 10 Downing St. But there has been a lot of speculation, fueled by reports from the Czech Republic that an Iraqi diplomat had met several times with suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta before the diplomat was expelled from Prague.

The bespectacled Aziz, a longtime associate of President Saddam Hussein who became a familiar face to television viewers during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, avoided the kind of hyperbole common in Baghdad either in condemning the United States’ “aggression” against Iraq or in defending Iraq’s actions over the past decade.

On the issue of Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Ani, the Iraqi diplomat expelled from Prague, Aziz said the allegation was a fabrication. “This meeting did not take place,” Aziz said. “It is a lie. We checked with him: ‘Did you ever meet somebody called Atta?’ ”

When asked if the question was posed more broadly to Ani, such as whether Atta met with him using a different name, Aziz said: “Even if such an incident had taken place, it doesn’t mean anything. Any diplomat in any mission might meet people in a restaurant here or there and talk to them, which is meaningless. If that person turned out to be something else, that doesn’t mean he had a connection with what that person did later.”

From his perspective, the troubles between the United States and Iraq began not with Iraqi troops entering Kuwait in August 1990 but with America’s refusal to negotiate a political solution to their differences.

“America chose to be the enemy of Iraq,” Aziz said, adding that he tried to bridge the political divide with former presidents Bush and Clinton and was rebuffed without even an answer. “For eight years, the American government refused a meeting even of junior diplomats.”

Then, he said, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. broke that silence with a letter to Iraq delivered via Baghdad’s ambassador to the United Nations that warned the Mideast nation not to take advantage of the current crisis. Iraq responded by calling the note “stupid” but maintained that it had no intention of being provocative.

The bottom line, according to Aziz, is that if the U.S. has any interest in resolving issues with Iraq, it should be willing to talk.

“If the American government is ready for a political solution, we are ready,” he said. “For us, enough is enough.”