Ambassador walks out of UN debate

US ambassador John Negroponte has walked out of a UN Security Council debate after his Iraqi counterpart accused Washington of trying to exterminate Iraqi people.

Iraq's envoy Mohammed Al-Douri charged that the United States had arranged for contracts to rebuild Iraq in 1997, six years before the war began last week.

Negroponte got up and walked out as Al-Douri continued to speak, accusing the United States of a military campaign to wipe out the Iraqi people.

"I did sit through quite a long part of what he had to say but I'd heard enough," Negroponte said.

Al-Douri said the United States had even planned the carving up of Iraq before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and said the United States was now using the humanitarian issue to hide its "criminal aggression."

The Iraqi envoy urged the Security Council to halt the war in Iraq, saying ending the conflict was even more important than getting humanitarian assistance into the region.

Al-Douri was the last of more than 80 speakers at the first open Security Council debate on Iraq since the war began last week. About a dozen countries that are not on the council supported the US position, but the vast majority opposed the war and expressed regret that Iraq's disarmament could not be achieved peacefully.

"Britain and the United States are about to start a real war of extermination that will kill everything and destroy everything," Al-Douri warned. "And then their regret will be of no use."

He said: "The warning I would like to make to the members of the august council is that the United States and the British were hoodwinked when they were told that the Iraqi people would receive them with flowers and hugs and ululations, and the children and the mothers will rejoice at the coming of the US forces."

It was at that point that Negroponte got up from his seat around the horseshoe-shaped table in the Security Council chamber and walked out.

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