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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021010/1/33muw.html Agence France-Presse Thursday October 10, 21:10 PM Iraq invites US to inspect two suspect sites, US bombs Basra airport Iraq's arms programme chief invited the US administration to inspect two alleged secret weapons sites, shortly before Baghdad reported a fresh US air strike on a southern airport. US warplanes attacked Basra international airport, destroying its radar system and damaging buildings used by passengers, in the third strike on the facility since September, an official spokesman told state television. Before the raid, in which no casualties were immediately reported, oil prices in London had eased with Baghdad's latest bid to head off war. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, headed for Russia as part of a diplomatic drive to close ranks on Iraq among the Big Five with veto powers in the UN Security Council. "The American administration can send whoever it wants to visit the An-Nasr and Al-Furat sites, which it suspects of being used to produce weapons of mass destruction," Abdel Tawab Mulla Howeish told a Baghdad press conference. "If the American administration wants to see the two sites, we urge them to inspect them immediately," said Howeish, who is also Iraq's military industries minister. The two sites were named in a dossier Blair has released on Iraq's arsenal, while US President George W. Bush showed a satellite photograph of Al-Furat in a speech this week while threatening to disarm Baghdad by force, if necessary. "All we have done is rebuild the An-Nasr site without enlarging it, while we have undertaken no work at the Al-Furat site, which was being constructed when it was destroyed in 1991 and which was never used," Howeish said. "We do not have weapons of mass destruction. We do not have programmes or plans to produce them and we have not violated UN Security Council resolutions relating to this issue in the absence of inspectors," stressed Howeish. After the press conference, Iraqi authorities took journalists on a tour of the two sites. On September 16, Iraq accepted the unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors after a hiatus of nearly four years. But the inspectors' mission is on hold while Washington and London wrangle with the other three permanent members of the Security Council -- France, Russia and China -- over the need for a tough new resolution. In London, the price of oil slipped in early trading Thursday before the new raid on Basra. The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude for November delivery fell to 27.75 dollars a barrel in early deals from 28.13 dollars at the close of trading on Wednesday. Tony Machacek, an oil broker with Prudential Bache, said the Iraqi offer to the US administration had pushed crude oil prices lower. "The aggressive war talk seems to be a little bit abated at the moment," he said. But the US Congress was still mobilising for possible war. The House of Representatives was expected to vote Thursday to authorize Bush to unilaterally go to war if the United Nations fails to rid Iraq of its alleged mass destruction weapons. Beside pressing congressmen to grant the president the special powers, the White House has also called for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to be brought before a special war crimes tribunal. The House was scheduled to vote between 1800 GMT and 2000 GMT, according to a spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert. More than 300 of the 435 House members are expected to support the measure. In the Senate, where at least 60 of the 100 senators back the measure, a vote on limiting debate to 30 hours was also scheduled for Thursday. Senator Robert Byrd, 84, a Democrat from West Virginia, passionately argued against limiting the debate time. "This is a fateful decision," he said. "What's the hurry? The Senate is being stampeded on this vote." The London Times reported Thursday that 52 bishops of the Church of England had warned that war against Iraq without further backing from the United Nations was unacceptable. "We nonetheless hold that to undertake a preventive war at this juncture would be to lower the threshold for war unacceptably," The Times quoted the churchmen as saying in an unprecedented document. Britain's prime minister left for Russia for two days of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at narrowing differences over Iraq. "We regard Russia very much as our partner in this issue and I am hopeful that we can resolve it in such a way that we meet the concerns of everybody," Blair told the BBC's Russian service on the eve of his departure. In talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw late Wednesday, Iran's President Mohammad Khatami voiced doubts over the threat posed by Saddam and hit out at the West for supplying Iraq with chemical arms in the first place. Accusing US leaders of "arrogance and haste", Khatami warned Straw that Washington's "political conduct can only result in the strengthening of extremist movements' activities in the Islamic world." Straw visited four countries in a bid to rally their support for the British-backed US tough line on Iraq. Instead of any public endorsement, he ran into a wall of scepticism and vocal opposition to a war that regional leaders said would risk destabilising the whole Middle East. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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