BAGHDAD — A senior Iraqi official said Monday that a four-day air offensive by the United States and Britain destroyed two factories making parts for Iraq's short-range missile program and killed 62 military personnel, plus a "much, much higher" number of civilians.
Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz gave his government's first detailed account of military losses at an evening news conference, ridiculing U.S. and British assertions that the missile-and-bomb campaign had seriously undermined Iraq's 400,000-strong armed forces. The only real damage was to civilian infrastructure, he said, dubbing that "the American way of war."
In tones both angry and righteous, Aziz said the United States should have no hope of reviving the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
"The moment America and Britain launched missiles against Iraq, they killed UNSCOM," he said.
Emboldened by widespread criticism of the bombing campaign, Iraq appears to have increased its demands of the international community rather than diminished them.
Before the bombings, Baghdad had been seeking from the U.N. Security Council a "comprehensive review" of its compliance with U.N. resolutions--a review that it hoped would lead to a relaxation of economic sanctions.
Now, according to Aziz, Baghdad is demanding immediate lifting of the sanctions, an end to the arms monitoring program, and the condemnation of U.S. and British "naked aggression" by the rest of the world.
According to Aziz, the only reason Iraq has been continually subjected to weapons inspections, attacks and a strict oil embargo is because it is the only state in the region that has refused to submit to American "hegemony."
"They thought foolishly that when they sent a few hundred missiles against Iraq that the people of Iraq would rise up against the leadership. This is fantasy. This is a Rambo-like fantasy," he said.
Aziz accused the United States of engaging in a "Zionist, imperialist conspiracy" to destroy his country, and said President Clinton was either lying or deluded when he said that there was support in the Arab world for the air assault.
In another development Monday, U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator Hans von Sponeck said that the military strikes had disrupted distribution of supplies under the U.N.-approved oil-for-food program but that evacuated U.N. aid workers will be returning to the country today.
