Posted: 7/8/2002 5:53:09 AM EDT
[#6]
It was this article: [img]http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/WORLD/meast/07/07/iraq.farrakhan/story.farakkhan.ap.jpg[/img] [url]http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/07/iraq.farrakhan/index.html[/url] BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan warned Sunday that a U.S. strike against Iraq could backfire.
"If the United States attacks Iraq, that hatred will only be worse and the cycle of violence that is now seen in acts that are called acts of terror will only increase and become worse," the Nation of Islam leader told reporters after meeting with high-level Iraqi officials on the second day of a two-day visit.
He said Iraqi leaders are confident their country ultimately would prevail: "They feel that nothing and no one will be able to destroy Iraq. It's been here for 5,000 years."
Farrakhan, who also visited Syria, Qatar and Lebanon on his trip to the region, said Iraqi government officials, including Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadhan, appeared to be in high spirits, "despite the threat of imminent war."
Though they expressed the desire for peace, "they will fight if they are attacked," Farrakhan said.
He said he was visiting Iraq to encourage Muslim leaders to speak with one voice to President Bush "against the war planned by the United States against the government and people of Iraq."
A spokesman has said the White House does not comment on war plans, but Bush has made clear his views toward the regime of President Saddam Hussein, calling for new leadership in the country and including Iraq as part of "axis of evil" along with North Korea and Iran.
Farrakhan, the controversial and outspoken minister of the Nation of Islam, an African-American Islamic ministry, has traveled to Iraq three or four times over the last decade and arrived Saturday in Baghdad with an entourage of about 15 people.
He decried U.N. sanctions that have been in place since after the Iraqis invaded Kuwait more than a decade ago.
"This delegation believes that if the American people really understood and knew the horror of sanctions and what these sanctions have produced -- of suffering among the Iraqi people -- that the American people would rise up against such a policy," he said.
"Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said sanctions is a weapon of mass destruction. More than one and a half million Iraqis have died since the end of the war in 1991, 600,000 of these are children, and at least 5,000 Iraqis are dying each month that these sanctions continue."
Farrakhan said he would appeal to Bush and the Congress on his return to the United States and urge that Iraq not be attacked.
"Before one American soldier is placed in harm's way, or one bomb is dropped on Iraq, there should and must be a congressional hearing on this matter and this proposed war must be debated in Congress," Farrakhan said.
"Those who want war must come before the American people to state their reasons for such and allow scholars and scientists who disagree with the administration position to testify before the Congress. Let the American people hear both sides of this."
He urged Congress to invite Iraqi leaders to visit the United States and defend their position that the country has no weapons of mass destruction. The United States says Iraq is working on developing such weapons.
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