Iraq protests U.S. air strikes

BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Iraq has protested to the United Nations about a U.S. and British air strike against targets in the southern "no fly" zone last week that it says left three dead and 16 wounded and destroyed a mosque.

No independent confirmation of the casualties was available, and the United States has said the Dec. 26 strikes were aimed at military command-and-control facilities in response to the Iraqi shoot-down of a U.S. unmanned aircraft earlier this month.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri called the air strikes "brutal terrorist aggression," adding that they were "a flagrant material breach" of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq were established by the United States and its allies in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. The allies argue that they enforce the zones pursuant to U.N. resolutions calling on the Iraqis to cease persecution of the Kurdish minority in the north and the so-called marsh Arabs in the south.

For its part, Iraq says the zones -- and their enforcement with frequent air strikes against targets on the ground -- are a violation of Iraq's "independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity," in the words of Sabri's letter.

The letter, dated Dec. 30 and distributed to news agencies in Baghdad Tuesday, also accuses Kuwait of being "directly involved" in the air strikes. The allied planes took off from airfields in the Gulf kingdom.

"We hope that you would draw the attention of the U.N. Security Council to this aggression," the letter concludes, adding, "We also demand that the security council honestly fulfill its duties under the (U.N.) charter, put an end to this terrorist aggression and have those involved it -- the United States, Britain and Kuwait -- assume legal responsibility for it."

Also Tuesday, arms inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission searched seven sites in central and suburban Baghdad on Tuesday.

In a related development, the United Nations said Tuesday that Iraq has invited Hans Blix, UNMOVIC executive chairman, for further talks on the inspection effort.

An Iraqi Information Ministry official said a team of ballistic missile experts inspected the premises of the al Mansour company in a northern Baghdad suburb, while another team searched a factory run by the Iraqi department for military industries in the area of Yussufiya, just south of the Iraqi capital.

In central Baghdad, a biological team visited a center for medical research and re-visited the Ibn Sina research center, while a chemical team explored an oil research facility and a company specializing in chemical and petrochemical production.