Albright warns Gus Dur against visitting Iraq

Albright warns Gus Dur against visitting Iraq

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AFP): Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid will harm his country's stature if he follows through on plans to visit Iraq this year, U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on Saturday.

Albright said such a trip would be inappropriate and ill- advised and urged Wahid to heed Washington's advice, which was pointedly ignored by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez when he traveled to Baghdad on Thursday and Friday.

"It's not up to me to tell Wahid what to do, I think, however, it does not enhance the stature of any country to go there," Albright told AFP in an interview here after the annual U.S- Mexico-Canada foreign ministers' meeting.

"I think it would be very useful (for the Indonesian leader to listen to U.S advice), President Wahid has a great deal to do in Indonesia," she said.

"We obviously give advice, other countries give us advice, if countries don't want to take it, that's their problem," Albright said, cataloguing the reasons why visiting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a bad idea.

"I don't believe that countries gain in stature by going to visit the head of a state who has invaded a neighboring country, who has gassed his own people, who has tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction and who has not returned Kuwait property or made an accounting of Kuwaiti prisoners of war."

"I don't think that that improves the standing of any country," she said.

Earlier on Saturday, Abdurrahman said he would visit Iraq in the coming months, telling reporters that like Chavez, who became the first head of state to meet the Iraqi president since the Gulf War in 1991, he would not be bowed by U.S objections to the trip.

"I will visit Baghdad at the end of the summer," Abdurrahman said at a joint press conference with Chavez, who arrived in Jakarta Saturday as part of a tour of OPEC nations.

The United States, through its third-highest ranking diplomat, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering, had already asked Abdurrahman not to visit Iraq or other countries Washington regards as state sponsors of terrorism, but the Indonesian leader rejected the request.

"We are not a lackey of the U.S," Abdurrahman said after Pickering made his comments. "We are free to go anywhere."

That reaction is similar to the feeling expressed by Chavez when Washington advised him not to travel to Iraq early last week.

Albright said she was unimpressed with countries that pursued controversial activities for the sake of standing up to Washington.

"Doing something to spite the United States is not exactly great policy," Albright said, adding that she was "surprised" Chavez had gone ahead with the visit.

"What we're trying to do is show that Saddam Hussein is not the kind of leader who has earned the respect of other leaders," she said.

"I'm surprised that President Chavez wanted to have the dubious honor of being the first leader to go to Baghdad" since the Gulf War, Albright said, adding that she was mystified why any leader would want to meet with Saddam.

"We did not make up Saddam Hussein," she said. "Saddam Hussein ten years ago did something that the international community as a whole finds unacceptable.

"It's very hard for me to determine what their motivations are," she said of Chavez and Wahid.

In Baghdad Hamed Rashid al-Rawi, deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament, said Iraq was pleased with Abdurrahman's announcement as it was the beginning of the end of the U.N embargo imposed on it after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

He said" the announcement of the upcoming visit of the Indonesian President signifies the beginning of the crumbling and the collapse of the embargo, and we hope that is going to continue."

"This visit is proof of the world's solidarity and support for Iraq and its resistance to US and British aggression."

"Iraq will welcome Wahid with the kindness for which Iraqis are well known, and he will be the esteemed guest of President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people," he added.

Although Abdurrahman is not an Arab, he is a fluent Arabic speaker who studied in Baghdad in his youth, and he leads the world's largest Muslim country, with Muslims accounting for 90 percent of its 210 million people.