Iraqi president warns Turkey

Baghdad: Iraq has no plans to revive weapons

Iraqi's leader Saddam Hussein

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- In response to a warning from Turkey, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warned its neighbor not to side with the United States in any future conflict.

Hussein's message was in a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit released by the Iraqi News Agency late Friday.

Hussein also said Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and no intention of producing them. The United States has repeatedly expressed concern that Iraq is working on such weapons, and just this week, said it is up to Iraq to prove it is not.

Ecevit, after a visit to Washington in January, sent a message to the Iraqi president urging him to immediately allow United Nation's weapons inspectors, or risk a U.S. attack.

The Iraqi president replied: "We expect from Turkey to stick to rules of good neighborliness and principles of international law and to contribute seriously to protecting security and stability in the region."

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He said the United States is using the issue of weapons inspections as a pretext for a planned attack.

The statement was the first comment on weapons inspections by the Iraqi president since Baghdad offered last month to reopen talks with the United Nations. Diplomats say those talks could potentially lead to the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, who withdrew from Iraq in 1998 just before the United States and Britain began a major bombing campaign, saying Iraq was not cooperating with inspectors.

"As for weapons of mass destruction, Iraq no longer has any of these weapons and it has no intention to produce them," Hussein said. He said seven years of inspections in Iraq had shown that the country's deadliest weapons programs had been dismantled.

The United States has charged that Iraq did not allow inspectors access to all potential weapons sites.