Saddam urges Iraqis to 'welcome UN inspectors'

President Saddam Hussein today urged the Iraqi people to support the new UN arms inspections as a welcome opportunity to disprove American allegations that his government had weapons of mass destruction.

In a holiday greeting to Iraqi leaders, Saddam said he agreed to the inspections, in which one of his own palaces was searched, "to keep our people out of harm's way" in the face of US threats.

His remarks contrasted sharply with a statement yesterday by his vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, who had accused the UN monitors of being American and Israeli spies and of staging the presidential palace inspection as a provocation.

Saddam spoke at a gathering of the leadership of his Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi military on the first morning of the three–day Muslim holiday of Eid al–Fitr.

He denounced Washington as an "unjust, arrogant, debased American tyranny." Then, turning to allegations that Iraq retained chemical and biological weapons, he said Iraqis wanted to disprove those claims after a four–year absence of U.N. weapons inspectors from their country.

"Some might claim that we didn't give them a proper chance to resist, with tangible evidence, the American allegations. "We shall provide them with such a chance," he said, referring to the round of U.N. weapons inspections that began last week.

Alluding to eventual war, Saddam declared: "We shall take the stand that befits our people, principles and mission. Victory will be yours."

Vice President Ramadan, in his remarks the previous evening to a visiting delegation of Egyptian professionals, said of the inspectors: "Their work is to spy to serve the CIA and Mossad (Israel's intelligence service)."

The language was reminiscent of clashes with inspectors in the 1990s, and Ramadan, known for his fiery statements, cited only years–old accounts of U.S. agents within the inspection agency of the 1990s. He offered no evidence of such connections in the new inspection agency.

A critical deadline approaches this weekend for the Baghdad government. On Saturday, it is expected to submit a declaration to the United Nations on any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as well as on nuclear, chemical and biological programmes it says are peaceful.