Baghdad, Iraq ? Emboldened by the latest weapons inspectors’ report, Iraq on Saturday called on the United Nations to remove crippling sanctions and ban weapons of mass destruction in the entire Middle East — and in the United States.

Iraq resumed destroying banned Al Samoud 2 missiles under U.N. supervision Saturday after taking a day off, crushing six more in a process that chief inspector Hans Blix called a “substantial measure of disarmament.”

In the past week, Iraq has destroyed 40 of its 100 Al Samoud 2 missiles, prohibited by the United Nations because they could fly farther than a U.N.-imposed limit of 93 miles. It also has been destroying equipment used to make them.

Iraq took the inspectors’ report as an endorsement of its work and argued not only that war plans should be canceled, but that sanctions imposed on for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait should be removed.

“We demand that the Security Council and the world decide on … the lifting of sanctions on Iraq in a comprehensive and complete way,” said a spokesman Iraq President Saddam Hussein.

The spokesman claimed the weapons inspectors had verified Iraq has rid itself of weapons of mass destruction — something the inspectors said would take months to do — and appealed for a ban on such weapons to be extended beyond Iraq: to Israel, and eventually to the United States.

The spokesman, reporting on the meeting, said Iraq called on the Security Council “to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction since Iraq has become free of them.”