Russia and U.S trade barbs over Iraq

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian envoys exchanged sharp words on Thursday over Iraq and Kosovo at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Georgia, at which Russia found little support for its actions in the Caucasus.

It was the council's sixth emergency session on the crisis in the former Soviet republic, which Russia invaded earlier this month to thwart an attempt by Tbilisi to restore its control over a breakaway region.

Like the five previous council meetings on the brief war this month between Russia and Georgia, the 15-nation body passed no resolution or statement due to Russia's veto powers.

The meeting was characterized by Cold War-style exchanges of insults between the U.S. and Russian U.N. ambassadors that reflected the growing tensions between the two countries.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the meeting it was a violation of the U.N. charter for member states to use force against others, or threaten to use it, and suggested that Moscow's claims to be protecting Russian citizens in Georgia's South Ossetia region were a sham.

Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, suggested Wolff's statement was hypocritical and referred to the U.S.-led March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Moscow strongly opposed.

"I would like to ask the distinguished representative of the United States -- weapons of mass destruction. Have you found them yet in Iraq or are you still looking for them?"

The United States justified the invasion of Iraq by saying it had to find and secure what it said were caches of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons hidden by then-President Saddam Hussein. The weapons were never found.