Iraq unconditionally accepted a UN resolution demanding its disarmament, saying it was choosing “peaceful means to protect the country from the threat of war.” In a letter to Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, the Iraqi government said it “accepts the resolution, unreservedly, without conditions and accepts the return of the inspectors,” Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Al Douri said. The Iraqi ambassador said the government always chose “peaceful means to protect the country from the threat of war.” US President George W. Bush said that the world expects Iraq to disarm “for the sake of peace,” giving a muted reply to Baghdad’s pledge to comply with a UN disarmament resolution. “We the world, expects [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussain to disarm for the sake of peace,” Bush told reporters as he met Annan at the White House. The White House cautiously welcomed Baghdad’s pledge to accept the resolution but said the Iraqis must further signal cooperation “by their actions.”
Other important events
1832 The first streetcar, a horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason goes into operation in New York City.
1913 Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1918 Republic of Austria is proclaimed.
1927 Holland Tunnel opens between New York and New Jersey.
1935 US President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth.
1940 Walt Disney’s Fantasia opens in New York.
1942 British forces retake Tobruk, Libya, in Second World War.
1945 Sukarno becomes president of Indonesia.
1950 Venezuelan junta leader Carlos Chalbaud is assassinated.
1961 Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.
1970 Hafez Al Assad seizes power in a bloodless coup in Syria.
1975 World Health Organisation announces that Asia is free of smallpox for first time in history.
1985 Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero, more than 25,000 people dies.
1988 Palestinian National Council agrees unanimously on the draft of independent state declaration.
1989 Rohana Wijeweera, the leader of the People’s Liberation Front, dies in a shootout in Sri Lanka.
1992 Microsoft releases Microsoft Access v1.0, a database management system.
1994 Swedish voters approve European Union membership in a referendum.
1995 A bomb rips through a building filled with American and Saudi military personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing seven.
1999 Peru signs an agreement with Chile to end a 120-year territorial dispute.
2000 Philippine President Joseph Estrada becomes the first Philippine leader to be impeached.
2006 Voters in South Ossetia overwhelmingly approve a referendum calling for independence from Georgia.
2008 The UAE government appoints Fatima Saeed Obaid Al Awani as the first female marriage registrar in the UAE.
2010 Pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi walks free after more than seven years under house arrest in Myanmar.
2011 McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton wins Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.
2012 UAE government approves the draft of the Wudeema law to protect children rights.
2014 Two car bombs shutter the UAE and Egyptian embassies in Libya’s militia controlled capital in Tripoli.
2015 A series of terror attacks across the city of Paris and killing at least 129 people.
