I'd love to see a transcipt. MSNBC was just playing snippets. Two things of note: One was what seemed to be a veiled threat toward the European community to consider all the Arabs who live in their countries, and how they will feel to see Iraq attacked (as though Iraq is the representative of the Arab world).


The second was when an Israeli reporter stood to ask something along the lines of whether, if attacked, Iraq would attack Israel again. Aziz refused to answer, saying (again, paraphrasing), "I am not prepared to answer the questions of Israeli journalists..." Of course, the rest of the international press expressed outrage on behalf of their Israeli colleague and refused to continue the conference...not.


Again, it would be nice to see a transcript.


Edit: Israpundit is ahead of me with a pointer to this article about the incident. Apparently a few reporters did walk out - including some Germans. Good for them!

[...]Correspondent Menachem Gantz, based in Rome for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, asked Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at a news conference in the Italian capital: "Are you considering any kind of attack as a possibility against Israel in case of an American attack?"


Aziz, invited by the Foreign Press Association to give the news conference, responded: "When I came to this press conference it was not in my agenda to answer questions by the Israeli media. Sorry."


Some journalists in the packed room of the association's headquarters whistled and booed at that reply.


The association's president, Eric Jozsef, a French journalist, urged Aziz to respond.


"No, I'm not going to answer," the Iraqi official said.


The room was packed with about 100 journalists, with scores of others listening from another room. About 20 of the journalists, including Israeli and German correspondents, walked out, Gantz among them.[...]