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Saadi challenges Butler on facts South News Feb 16 Baghdad: Iraq has accused UNSCOM chief Richard Butler of pushing towards military confrontation and challenged on the facts. "He is just exerting maximum pressure and provoking and beating the drums of war. He is just acting like a US or a British politician," An Iraqi presidential advisor, Amer al Sadi, told a press conference. Mr al Saadi said he was amazed by Mr Butler's comments in an interview in which the UN official had explained why his inspectors should have unhindered access to all suspected weapons sites in Iraq. Mr Butler said: "Wherever we have had access we have found prohibited weapons and have helped to get rid of them." But Mr al Sadi issued a direct challenge to Mr Butler: "Read the reports of the inspectors on all the hundreds and hundreds of inspections that were carried out by his team and tell us exactly where they have discovered weapons of mass destruction or related materials." "The facts are Iraq declared these weapons. Iraq presented these weapons to Unscom and Iraq destroyed them under the supervision of Unscom." General Amer al-Saadi went to say that US and Britain were undermining the work of the weapons inspectors. "The military attack would practically destroy the (monitoring) system which relies on communications cameras and sensors," said Amer al-Saadi. Saadi added that Iraq would make no attempt to tamper with the equipment of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with verifying Iraq has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html