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.