Iran Voices Support to Iraq

Iran on Monday voiced its oppositionto a possible US attack on Iraq and stressed that resorting to war and violence is never the solution to global problems, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said he hopesthe possibility of US attacks on Iraq will never materialize.

On Saturday, US President George W. Bush and the visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a joint press conference that they had agreed to consider "all options" for dealing with Baghdad and "we must be prepared to act where terrorism or weapons of mass destruction threaten us."

The United States has repeatedly voiced its readiness to launch military attacks against Iraq and to topple the Saddam Hussein regime while demanding Baghdad let UN weapons inspectors back to determine whether it has chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, which Washington worried Saddam could hand to terrorists like thosewho carried out the September 11 attacks on the U.S.

Asefi noted that the Middle East cannot put up with a third war and any attempt to change governments by military means is against international norms, democratic tenets and moral ethics.

"It is only people and nations who can decide on the future of their country and choose their own government," he stressed.

The spokesman, meanwhile, urged Baghdad to cooperate with the United Nations and avoid giving any pretext to those seeking hostile policy against it.

Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year bloody war from 1980 to 1988,costing some one million lives from both sides. Although there has been improvement in dealing with issues such as the exchange of prisoners of war (POWs), the rival governments' support for opposition groups remain the main stumbling blocks to the normalization of relations between the two neighbors.

(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2002)