Baghdad Sees Itself as World's Top Terror Victim
Tue Feb 19, 3:18 PM ET
By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq tried to turn the tables on Washington on Tuesday, telling the U.N. Security Council it was the world's "foremost victim of terrorism" as a target of terrorist acts openly financed by the United States.

Audio/Video
Powell: Iraq Must Allow Inspections (AP)



In a letter to the council's counter-terrorism committee, set up after Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Baghdad accused Washington of openly spending tens of millions of dollars "on troops of mercenaries to carry out terrorist operations against Iraq."

"Iraq is the foremost victim of terrorism," the letter said. The U.S.-sponsored actions constituted "state terrorism" as they were funded under the "Iraq Liberation Act," approved by Congress several years ago, it argued.

President Bush last month accused Baghdad, along with Iran and North Korea, of making up an "axis of evil" bent on backing international terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Bush has been conducting a review of U.S. policy on Iraq, and has vowed to act against it if Baghdad threatened the United States, although administration officials have said there were no current plans to launch a military attack.

Under the Iraq Liberation Act, the Bush administration has agreed to provide about $800,000 a month in February, March and April to the opposition Iraqi National Council, which hopes to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the INC leadership, said three weeks ago that the time had come for U.S. forces to overthrow Saddam as they overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He said the Iraqi opposition had 40,000 men under arms in the parts of northern Iraq under Kurdish control but needed U.S. guarantees of protection before they took the offensive.

The group failed in an earlier CIA-backed attempt to overthrow Saddam in 1996.

While some U.S. officials have dismissed the INC leaders as armchair revolutionaries out of touch with their homeland, others believe that the forces in the north could act as the springboard for a military campaign to topple Saddam if backed by U.S. air power.

INC officials say the United States has not yet agreed to finance activities inside Iraq, one of the opposition group's main requests from Washington.

But the Iraqi letter to the Security Council committee said nations including the United States had financed, armed and trained "terrorists" who slipped across its borders to carry out kidnappings and other "terrorist acts."