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Iraq I: Baghdad Submits WMD Declaration Iraq submitted a 12,000-page declaration of WMD-related information to international inspectors Saturday, a day ahead of the deadline set by the U.N. Security Council in November (see GSN, Dec. 6). In the documents, “we declare that Iraq is empty of any weapons of mass destruction,” said Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring directorate, which prepared the report. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had ordered Iraqi officials to be “fair and frank” in preparing the report, he added. “That means that when we say we have no weapons of mass destruction, we are speaking the truth,” Amin said (Burns/Sanger, New York Times, Dec. 8). In addition to the full report, Iraq submitted 900 pages of other documents, including information on the status of U.N. monitoring equipment, according to the Washington Post. Iraq also provided 10 compact discs containing semi-annual declarations of its WMD programs as required by earlier U.N. resolutions (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Dec. 8). Once the U.N. Security Council gains access to the declaration, it will have a standard for determining whether Iraq has come clean about its WMD efforts, according to the New York Times. In the declaration, Iraq should account for weapons and related materials that U.N. inspectors knew about during the 1990s but could not find during previous inspections, officials said. Such items include 4,000 tons of chemical weapons precursors, 31,000 chemical weapons munitions, 20 Scud ballistic missiles modified for chemical and biological warfare, and 600 tons of VX precursors — enough to make about 200 tons of the nerve agent, according to Western experts. When asked if the Iraqi declaration would include information on these types of items, Amin replied, “Generally speaking, the declaration will answer all the questions that have been raised in the past months and years” (Burns/Sanger, New York Times). The declaration contains no new information, however, to support Iraq’s claims that it destroyed its biological and chemical weapons arsenals during the 1990s, Gen. Amir Saadi, an Iraqi presidential adviser, said yesterday. Iraqi officials have been unable to find any documentation beyond what has been given to inspections over the last 10 years, Saadi said. “Those documents have not been increased, not by a single document,” Saadi said. “We have done all researching we could, and we could not find any more,” he added. While Iraq has destroyed all of its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, it made a mistake in also destroying the documentation of such weapons’ production and destruction, Saadi said. Iraq’s biological weapons program “was totally and completely removed before the inspectors arrived in Iraq,” he said. “When you remove something completely, it no longer exists, and if you want to do it properly, you also remove all the evidence that it ever existed. That’s what we did, and retrospectively, it was a mistake,” Saadi added. Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix recently expressed skepticism over Iraq’s claims that it has no more information. “The production of mustard gas is not like marmalade,” he said on a trip to Baghdad last month. “You have to keep some records,” Blix added (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Dec. 9). U.S. Response The United States began this weekend to prepare a team of analysts from the CIA and U.S. national laboratories to examine the Iraqi declaration. The team plans to compare the information in the declaration with U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s known WMD projects before inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 plus additional information, including that provided by defectors, obtained since then, according to the New York Times. The Iraqi declaration must be able to withstand full U.S. scrutiny for Iraq to avoid war, U.S. President George W. Bush said Saturday. “We will judge the declaration’s honesty and completeness only after we have thoroughly examined it, and that will take some time,” Bush said during his weekly radio address. Bush would feel free to attack Iraq if the United States determines that Hussein lied in the declaration, a senior Bush administration official said Friday. “This is not a court of law,” the official said. “This is a matter for national security, and we have to go with the preponderance of the evidence,” the official added. UNMOVIC and IAEA The first copy of the Iraqi declaration was scheduled to arrive in New York yesterday to be provided to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), the Times reported. A second copy would then be provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (Burns/Sanger, New York Times). Out of the 12,000-page declaration, 2,100 pages cover Iraq’s nuclear activities, according to Agence France-Presse. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said today that it should take the agency about 10 days to make a preliminary report to the Security Council before submitting a full report by Jan. 27. It could take up to a year, however, to know the full extent of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities, ElBaradei said, calling for patience. “We know that our conclusion is very critical to decisions which come between war and peace, so we feel conscious that before we come to any conclusion that it is based on absolutely as much information, as much fact as possible,” ElBaradei said. “We have been out (of Iraq) for four years. So even if it takes us a year to come to a conclusion, it should be looked at in that perspective,” he added (Ryan Nakashima, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 9). No Intelligence for Inspectors The United States has told U.N. inspectors that it will not give them intelligence information on suspect Iraq sites, as called for in the new U.N. resolution, until it thoroughly examines the Iraqi declaration, ElBaradei said Friday. The United Kingdom has also refused to provide inspectors with intelligence information, according to the Washington Post. “I trust they will give us whatever they have. I have impressed on them that they need to make (it) available,” ElBaradei said (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, Dec. 7). Only Permanent Council to See Declaration The Security Council reached a compromise yesterday over member access to the Iraqi declaration. The five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — are to receive an unedited version, White House and Security Council officials said. Before the declaration is given to the other council members, it will be edited to remove information that might aid those countries in developing their own WMD and ballistic missile programs, sources said. It has yet to be determined how that will be done without angering the other 10 members, which include Syria, the Los Angeles Times reported. Colombia, a nonpermanent member that is currently Security Council president, will also probably receive an unedited copy of the declaration, a diplomat said. There are several concerns that led the Security Council to limit access to the full declaration, according to the Times. One such issue is the identity of companies that provided dual-use technologies to Iraq, according to former weapons inspector Jonathan Tucker. Some international companies have agreed to cooperate with inspectors on the condition that they would not be publicly identified,” he said. The names of those companies and descriptions of what items they provided to Iraq could be “a road map to other countries interested in obtaining dual-use technology,” Tucker said. The five permanent Security Council members, however, are believed to already have such information, he added (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9). Inspections In Iraq, an additional 25 U.N. inspectors arrived yesterday to help accelerate inspections, according to the Associated Press. Four are UNMOVIC specialists and 21 are IAEA nuclear experts, U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said. A further 25 to 30 inspectors, mostly from UNMOVIC, are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, he added. At the Baghdad airport yesterday, technicians began assembling the first of eight helicopters for use by the inspectors, AP reported. The helicopters are meant to help inspectors visit sites located farther from Baghdad. An IAEA inspection team yesterday visited the State Company for Geological Survey and Mining, located in Baghdad. The team spent two hours at the site, which had been involved in uranium processes that could have produced weapon-grade nuclear materials, AP reported. Moussa Jaafar al-Attiyah, the company’s chief geologist, said inspectors checked to ensure that equipment tagged during inspections in the 1990s had not been moved. Al-Attiyah said the search of the company was “an ordinary visit,” but he added, “This is not a welcome visit” (Bassem Mroue, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 9). IAEA experts also revisited the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center today, which they had visited last week (Hassan Jouini, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 9). An UNMOVIC team yesterday visited the Fallujah 3 site of the al-Tariq Company, 100 kilometers west of Baghdad. The site, which is a chemical factory that produces pesticides and insecticides, contains several dual-use items previously tagged by inspectors that were accounted for during yesterday’s visit, according to an IAEA press releease (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Dec. 8). Inspectors revisited the site today (Jouini, Agence France-Presse). For further information, see:
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