Powell: Iraq will have changed regime if it accepts UN resolution

Agence France-Presse
November 9, 2002

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has hinted that Washington would stop calling for a change of regime in Baghdad if Iraq agreed to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction and cooperated fully with the UN arms inspectors.

"If the Iraqi regime got rid of these weapons of mass destruction and were fully cooperating with the inspectors, then, in effect, it has changed its policies; it is a changed regime," Powell said late Friday in an interview on Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite television channel.

"The reason for regime change in the beginning, in 1998, under the previous American presidential administration, was because Iraq would not disarm, it would not comply with the resolutions," Powell went on.

"If it complies with those disarmament resolutions, in effect, it has adopted new policies, which suggest a change in the thinking in Baghdad and a changed regime."

The secretary of state stressed however that his country reserved the right to act against Iraq if it violated Security Council Resolution 1441 passed unanimously on Friday.

"The United States retains its option to act if the Security Council doesn't act," he declared.

Powell said the vote Friday "shows that the international community is unified" in its position on Iraq.

"What we succeeded in doing is getting all 15 members of the Security Council together behind a single resolution," he said after recalling that "we worked very closely with the French and the Russians and all of the other members of the Security Council in reconciling different points of view and different positions that were held."

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Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 | Ander Nieuws week 46