Word: aziz
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BAGHDAD: As the U.N. Security Council debates what to do about Iraq's continuing defiance of weapons inspectors, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz cooked up another propaganda coup Friday ? by taking foreign journalists on a tour of some of the off-limits-to-weapons-inspectors presidential sites...
...upshot: Aziz gets to look magnanimous; the media remains skeptical about whether what it saw was the real deal; and chief inspector Richard Butler's blood goes a couple of degrees past boiling. Butler reported to the Security Council Thursday on Iraq's continued prevarication. Aziz, he said, told him that Iraq had destroyed all its weapons of mass destruction ? but then turned around and increased the number of sites to which Butler and his team are denied access. Now it's not only "presidential and sovereign sites" that are off limits, but also ministry headquarters, plus anywhere Saddam Hussein...
BAGHDAD: At least the war of words is becoming more imaginative: Back during the standoff last month, Madeleine Albright called Saddam Hussein a ?congenital liar,? and Tariq Aziz fired back: ?It is she who is the liar.? Now, if nothing else, the two sides are becoming more loquacious: President Clinton called Saddam ?maddeningly stupid? Monday, while Iraqi newspapers retorted Wednesday that Clinton was an ?ugly adolescent? who has turned the White House into ?a nightclub where he plays the music himself on the flute and guitar...
...incidental detentes may be breaking out between the U.S. and its Persian Gulf bugaboos, Iran and Iraq. To wit: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he wants to talk ? and according to TIME Middle East correspondent Scott MacLeod, it's a genuine offer. Meanwhile Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is embroiled in potentially positive discussions with Richard Butler, chief U.N. weapons inspector, over opening up more sites to inspectors of all nations ? even American ones...
...Butler and Aziz, the first time the two sides have sat down to talk weapons since last month's standoff is progress in itself. The U.N. chief says we'll know in the next couple of days whether Iraq will consent to having its 60-odd palatial compounds inspected. Peace in the Gulf ? just in time for the holidays...