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Iraq denies U.S. charge it wastes money on base

BAGHDAD: Iraq added its voice on Sunday to denials of a U.S. accusation that it is wasting money on a military complex near Baghdad for exiled Iranian opposition fighters.

The Baghdad press said the charge made on Friday by the U.S. State Department, which said the money could have been used to improve the welfare of the Iraqi people, was a lie.

"Such a big lie is part of the American dirty and mean role which aims at inciting outbreaks of discord," newspapers quoted the Iraqi News Agency INA as saying.

The Iranian opposition group Mujahideen Khalq, which is based in Iraq, denied the U.S. accusation on Friday.

The group said that it alone had paid for the base near Baghdad and the State Department charges were propaganda to justify retaining harsh U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

The State Department, which released a photograph of the base on Friday, linked its allegations to a U.N. Security Council debate on the same day on humanitarian aspects of the sanctions.

Washington is under increasing international pressure to allow the easing of the sanctions which according to U.N. officials are causing great distress to the people of Iraq.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security Council during Friday's debate that Iraq was apparently winning the propaganda war on sanctions.

He called for improvements in a U.N. oil-for-food programme allowing Iraq to buy essential supplies with U.N. approval, saying they were especially needed for children.

He said the suffering of ordinary Iraqis caused by the sanctions posed "a serious moral dilemma" for the United Nations.

Baghdad newspapers also denied U.S. charges that the Mujahideen Khalq is a terrorist group.

"We tell the U.S. State Department that it knows better than any one else that Iraq is not among those supporting terrorism or dealing with it," INA said. "America is country number one in the world in supporting organised terrorism".

The Mujahideen use Iraq as a springboard for attacks into Iran and have several bases equipped with tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships close to the Iranian border.

Their bases have been the target of Iranian air and rocket attacks. Their office in Baghdad, ringed by a concrete wall, has also weathered several mortar and bomb attacks.-Reuters