A European Parliament delegation Thursday rejected US arguments for a war against Iraq, and said it was the job of the United Nations to ensure Baghdad possessed no weapons of mass destruction.

Francis Wurtz, a European MP from France speaking in the name of the 32-member delegation after a visit here, also criticized US Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the UN Security Council Wednesday.

Powell sought to convince Council members that Iraq had concealed banned weapons from UN inspectors and had ties to the al-Qaeda terror network.

"I think it is not very serious that an important country like the United States is organising a special UN Security Council meeting (in the presence of) many foreign affairs ministers and the heads of the UN inspectors with such poor elements" to support his accusations, Wurtz said.

"What Mr. Powell said about the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda is in total contradiction with the declarations of the experts of the CIA and the FBI two days ago that after investigations (for) one year they don't believe that there is such a link," he added.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the White House's efforts to link Iraq and al-Qaeda have caused splits at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some analysts of the agencies reportedly complained the scant evidence had been overblown.

However, Powell was joined at the Security Council by CIA chief George Tenet, and the agencies are towing the line in public.

Wurtz said the delegation was "representative of the large majority of the Europeans who reject the war" and believe that "today there is no one reason more than yesterday to accept any military action or preventive strike against Iraq." "We want a complete disarmament of mass destruction weapons in Iraq, if (they) existed ... That is the mission of the UN inspectors not of the US army." But Wurtz stressed that "at the same time, we refuse any complicity with the Iraqi regime. The only chance for Iraq today is to cooperate totally."
"We are supporting the mission of the (UN) inspectors. They need time, they need information, they need cooperation." Wurtz and his colleagues, who met Iraqi and UN officials during their four-day trip, urged the United Nations and the European Union to lift sanctions imposed on Baghdad following its 1990 seizure of Kuwait, which they said had only succeeded in harming Iraqi civilians.

Danish MP Lulla Sandbaek said "we have learned that weapons inspectors themselves estimate that if they can ... install video cameras into the (suspect) sites ... Iraq could not develop new weapons."
"This means that there is no danger of any imminent war. Iraq cannot be a danger for anybody as long as the weapons inspectors are here.

"If Powell is right when he sat there wagging his little bottle of anthrax, trying to put the fear of God into his population, what is going to happen if the Iraqis do have the anthrax and what is going to happen if al-Qaeda is actually here in Baghdad?" she asked.

"That is of course to give Saddam Hussein all the opportunity to use the weapons if he has them - they are almost asking him to use these weapons." - Sapa-AFP.