Von Sponeck warns against US attack

AMMAN (AFP) - A former UN assistant secretary general and humanitarian coordinator for Iraq warned against an eventual US attack on that country, saying it would further destabilise the Middle East.

"Promoting peace while fighting terrorism would provide the double pronged instrument needed to show the kind of leadership the world expects from the United States," Hans Von Sponeck said in an article in the Jordan Times.

"Part of such an initiative should be to seek a non-military solution to the Iraq conflict," he said Friday.

Von Sponeck, who resigned his post in 2000 to protest UN sanctions on Iraq, stressed that "intelligence analysis has not detected convincingly any links between Iraq and international terrorism.

"Nor has it confirmed an existing capacity of Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"What is know without doubt on the other hand is that the Iraqi people continue to suffer immensely, primarily because of economic sanctions," imposed by the UN following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, he added.

Von Sponeck urged the United States to heed the calls of Arab leaders who have warned against any strike on Iraq at a time when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to plague the Middle East.

"The need for peace and stability in a region which has suffered so severely offers no other solution," he said, pleading for a US "foreign policy shift for the region".

He urged the international community and the US to support the resumption of Iraqi-UN negotiations as a key step to a non-military solution.