Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq has withheld a decision on a U.N. order to start destroying its Al Samoud 2 missile program by the end of the week, but said Sunday it was “serious about solving this.”

Iraq’s chief liaison to U.N. weapons inspectors insisted Baghdad was “clean” of weapons of mass destruction and that there should be no new U.N. resolution on disarming Saddam Hussein, as the United States is demanding.

At a packed news conference Sunday night in Baghdad’s Information Ministry, Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohamed Amin gave Iraq’s first official comment on a Friday order by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix that it must dismantle its Al Samoud 2 missile program.

Iraq’s response will likely be a key factor in determining how the U.N. Security Council votes on a resolution the United States is expected to introduce early next week designed to win approval for an attack on Iraq.

“We are serious about solving this,” Amin told journalists. He said the order was being studied, “and we hope it will be resolved peacefully, without the interference of others, particularly the Americans.”

But Blix told Time magazine in an interview to be published today that “of course they have no credibility” and “diplomacy may need to be backed up by force.”

“Inspections may need to be backed up by pressure,” he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he did not expect Baghdad to resist the order.

“If they refused to destroy the weapons, the Security Council will have to make a decision,” Annan told reporters Sunday night in Turkey. “I don’t see why they would not destroy them.”

President Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, was defiant about the U.S. threat of war.

“Americans can harm and destroy buildings and installations, but will never be able to humiliate Iraq,” he was quoted as saying by the official Iraqi News Agency. “The people of Iraq are not defending only Iraq, but the whole Arab nation and its security.”