The chances of the U.N. Security Council approving the U.S.-British-Spanish draft resolution on Iraq did not improve over the weekend, as the United States has still not gained commitments from nine members of the council and Russia explicitly vowed to veto the resolution, according to reports (see GSN, March 7).
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said today that Russia would vote against the resolution that includes a March 17 deadline for Iraq to comply with earlier U.N. resolutions. Ivanov’s statement is the first time Russia has explicitly said it would vote against the resolution.
“Russia believes that no further resolutions of the U.N. Security Council are necessary, and therefore Russia openly declares that if [the] draft resolution that currently has been introduced for consideration and which contains demands in an ultimate form that cannot be met is nonetheless put to a vote, then Russia will vote against this resolution,” Ivanov was quoted by Interfax as saying (Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 10).
As for getting the nine votes needed to pass a council resolution, “We don’t have it in the bank,” an administration official said, adding that the United States would still continue to push for a vote on the resolution this week.
U.S. officials said they still hope that nine of the 15 council members will ultimately decide to support the resolution. Two of the six undecided permanent members, Chile and Guinea, indicated over the weekend, however, that they were not yet ready to give their support, according to the New York Times.
In a further attempt to gain backing, the United States is “likely” to agree to define the benchmarks Iraq would have to meet before the deadline to show compliance, although such requirements would likely be described outside the resolution, an administration official said. Some officials also said the March 17 deadline might be extended if that would help increase support.
“If somebody comes to us and says, ‘Give us a few more days, and we’ll vote for you,’ it’s something we would have to consider,” an administration official said (Weisman/Barringer, New York Times, March 10).
The United States might soon dispatch several senior officials, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, to the undecided council members to try and gain their support, according to the London Independent.
“There may well be a need for us to do some travel,” Rice said yesterday on ABC’s This Week (London Independent, March 10).
France, which has vigorously opposed any new resolution that would authorize military action against Iraq, has also begun a new round of diplomacy to persuade the undecided council members to oppose the draft resolution, according to CNN.com. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has been sent to visit three undecided African council members — Angola, Cameroon and Guinea (CNN.com, March 10).
In an apparent countermeasure to de Villepin’s Africa trip, the United Kingdom, a staunch supporter of the U.S. stance on Iraq, has dispatched Baroness Amos, minister for Africa, to Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, according to the BBC (BBC.com, March 10).
French President Jacques Chirac has called for an emergency summit of Security Council members in an attempt to develop a compromise solution to the Iraq crisis, his office said Saturday.
“War is not a small thing,” Chirac’s office said. “When you declare death or life, this merits being taken to the highest level of responsibility, (where leaders could) think through crisis management,” it added.
Powell, however, dismissed the idea, saying there was no need for such a meeting when council members have been expressing their opinions “openly and candidly” (Associated Press/Ha’aretz, March 9).
Inspectors Question U.S.-British Evidence
Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council Friday that an important piece of evidence that Iraq sought to rebuild its nuclear weapons program appears to be a fraud (see GSN, Jan. 29).
Documents that indicated that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were determined to be “not authentic” after being examined by U.N. and independent experts, ElBaradei said. The documents, a series of letters between Iraqi agents and Nigerien officials, were given to inspectors by the United Kingdom after prior review by U.S. intelligence. The creators of the documents had made a number of crude errors that signaled their forgery, such as the inclusion of names and titles that did not match the individuals who held office at the time the letters were supposed to have been written, officials said.
“We fell for it,” said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.
The IAEA does not fault the United Kingdom or the United States for the forged documents, an agency spokesman said. The documents “were shared with us in good faith,” the spokesman said.
In his report, ElBaradei also rejected the claim, often made by U.S. officials, that Iraq had purchased high-strength aluminum tubes for use in a uranium-enrichment program (see GSN, Feb. 6). Investigators had discovered a large number of documents that supported Iraq’s claim that the tubes were for use in a conventional rocket program, ElBaradei said. IAEA centrifuge experts had also concluded the tubes were not suitable for use in centrifuges, he said.
“It was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program,” ElBaradei said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, March 8).
White House officials yesterday attempted to counter ElBaradei’s report.
On the issue of whether the aluminum tubes were meant for a nuclear program, Powell said, “We still have an open question with respect to that and we see more information from a European country this week that suggests that that is exactly what those tubes were intended to be used for.”
The United States had never meant for the claim that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger to be the sole evidence of a renewed nuclear program, Rice said.
“I think you’ll find this has not been cited as a core to our case,” Rice said. “What we’ve said is that we believe the weakness in (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein’s program is the absence of fissile material and we do not know whether he has acquired fissile material,” she said (Agence France-Presse, March 9).
In his briefing Friday to the Security Council, U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix expressed frustration with the quality of intelligence that the United States has provided to inspectors.
“I would rather have twice the amount of high-quality information about sites to inspect than twice the number of expert inspectors to send,” Blix said.
While the White House has insisted that all relevant information is being given to the inspectors, some officials have privately said the quality and quantity of intelligence is low.
“We have some information, not a lot,” a U.S. official said.
Some of the information that the CIA has compiled on suspect Iraqi sites is of such low value it would be of little use to the inspectors, a U.S. intelligence official said. “You don’t swamp the U.N. with everything we have ever heard,” the official said (Drogin/Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 8).
New Evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts
U.N. inspectors have discovered in Iraq a new type of rocket that appears to be configured to disperse bomblets filled with biological and chemical weapons agents, U.S. officials said.
The reconfigured rocket warheads appear to be made out of Iraq’s arsenals of imported and indigenous weapons, according to the New York Times. The rocket was discovered in the last few months during the latest round of inspections, a U.S. official said. Iraqi officials first said the weapon was designed as a conventional cluster bomb, but a few days later they said some might have been configured for use with chemical weapons, the U.S. officials said.
The appearance of the rocket’s cluster bomblets suggested their use with biological and chemical agents, the U.S. official said.
“If you take the kinds of fuses we know they have, and you screw them in there, when these things come out from the main frame and they explode inward, chemical agents come out,” the official said. “These can be used for biological weapons, too,” the official added (Cushman/Weisman, New York Times, March 10).
A report circulated by Blix to the Security Council members after his briefing Friday also contained evidence of an undeclared large Iraqi drone, according to the London Times (see GSN, Feb. 6). The drone is believed to be the same one mentioned by Powell during his intelligence presentation to the Security Council on Feb. 5, diplomatic sources said (Bone/Watson, London Times, March 10).
The United States and the United Kingdom are expected to call on Blix today to label the drone as a “smoking gun,” according to the Times. The U.S. and British U.N. ambassadors plan to call on Blix to provide more information on the drone — the first undisclosed program discovered by inspectors — than he did during his speech to the council.
“It’s incredible,” said a senior diplomat from one of the still-undecided council members. “This report is going to have a clearly defined impact on the people who are wavering. It’s a biggie,” the diplomat added (James Bone, London Times, March 10).
Blix’s written report also detailed Iraqi plans to use biological and chemical weapons during the 1991 Gulf War in the event of a U.S. nuclear strike on Baghdad, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Hussein authorized Iraqi commanders to launch an attack with 50 al-Hussein missiles armed with chemical weapons and 25 armed with biological weapons in the event of a nuclear strike, the report says. The missiles, which had a range of 400 miles, were deployed at four hidden sites around Baghdad, it says.
In the event of a new war with the United States, Hussein has authorized the use of biological and chemical weapons in the event he is either captured or killed, which would place his younger son, Qusay, in power, U.S. intelligence officials said (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, March 10).
Time Drawing Near
ElBaradei today called on Hussein to take distinct steps to demonstrate compliance with inspections.
“What’s required is a dramatic change in spirit and sincerity,” ElBaradei said in an interview with the al-Hayat newspaper. “The Iraqi president (could) himself announce on television that he is prepared for complete cooperation and that he is giving directives to all Iraqi officials to cooperate completely and present all the documents they have, or even if they have weapons, to reveal them,” he added.
Iraq still has a chance to avoid war, through the door is quickly closing, ElBaradei said.
“I still feel that the war is not inevitable. But without doubt we are drawing near,” ElBaradei said. “The two coming weeks will be decisive and the ball is still in Iraq’s court,” he added (Reuters, March 10).
Iraq, however, believes it can do nothing now to prevent a war with the United States, Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief Iraqi liaison to the inspectors, said yesterday. Even so, Iraq would still continue to cooperate with the inspections process in order to derail the latest draft resolution, he said.
“We are preparing ourselves for a war, and at the same time we are working to resolve remaining issues” with the inspectors, said Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate. “There is a probability that the situation will be enhanced by the (support) of other states in the Security Council and the people around the world,” he said (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, March 10).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors visited at least three suspect Iraqi sites today, according to Reuters. Inspectors traveled to al-Taji to observe the destruction of prohibited al-Samoud 2 missiles (see related GSN story, today). They also traveled to al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range to search for additional R-400 bombs. Inspectors also visited a leather-dyeing factory in Nahrawan, south of Baghdad, said Iraqi Information Ministry official Uday al-Ta’ae (Hassan Hafidh, Reuters, March 10).
Yesterday, inspectors visited at least eight suspect Iraqi sites, according to a U.N. press release.
Inspectors supervised the destruction of al-Samoud 2 missiles. They also traveled to al-Qa Qaa storage site to verify the tagging of al-Samoud 2 warheads and to inspect the facility’s solid propellant production plant; and to al-Fatah Factory of the Karama State Company to destroy mechanical parts of guidance and control assemblies for al-Samoud 2 missiles, the U.N. release said.
Biological experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission traveled to al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range to supervise the transfer of excavated R-400 bombs to a more secure section of the site. UNMOVIC chemical inspectors visited the Tadmur Company for Tanning and Leather Industry. Inspectors also visited areas northwest of the northern city of Kirkuk.
IAEA inspectors visited the General Systems Company in central Baghdad. They also conducted a radiation survey inside the buildings of the Jurf al-Naddaf complex, south of Baghdad (U.N. release, March 9).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
Experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have conducted hundreds of inspections in Iraq since resuming the post-Gulf War inspection regime Nov. 27, 2002. About 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ recently reported activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | March 10 | Al-Taji | Inspectors observed the destruction of prohibited al-Samoud 2 missiles (see GSN, March 10). | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | Inspectors searched for additional R-400 bombs (see GSN, March 10). | | Nahrawan leather-dyeing factory | See GSN, March 10. | | March 9 | Al-Taji | Inspectors observed the destruction of prohibited al-Samoud 2 missiles (see GSN, March 10). | | Al-Qa Qaa storage site | Inspectors verified the tagging of al-Samoud 2 warheads and inspected the facility’s solid propellant production plant (see GSN, March 10). | | Al-Fatah Factory of the Karama State Company | Inspectors destroyed mechanical parts of guidance and control assemblies for al-Samoud 2 missiles (see GSN, March 10). | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | UNMOVIC biological experts supervised the transfer of excavated R-400 bombs to a more secure section of the site (see GSN, March 10). | | Tadmur Company for Tanning and Leather Industry | See GSN, March 10. | | Undisclosed areas northwest of the northern city of Kirkuk. | | General Systems Company in central Baghdad | | Jurf al-Naddaf complex, south of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey at buildings within the complex (see GSN, March 10). | | March 8 | Taji Technical Battalion | Inspectors supervised the destruction of al-Samoud 2 missiles (U.N. release, March 8). | | Al-Samoud Factory | U.N. release, March 8. | | Al-Qa Qaa | UNMOVIC missile inspectors verified the emptying and tagging of warheads for al-Samoud 2 missiles (U.N. release, March 8). | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | UNMOVIC biological inspectors supervised the excavation of R-400 bombs (U.N. release, March 8). | | Al-Qa-Qaa sulfuric acid plant | U.N. release, March 8. | | Yellow Corn Workshop/al-Haydaria | | Military factory currently under construction south of Baghdad | | High explosives-related sites south of Baghdad | | Sahal al-Din Company | | Area northwest of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors conducted a radiation survey (U.N. release, March 8). | | March 7 | Maintenance department of the Mosul railway station | U.N. release, March 7. | | Branch of the Mesopotamia State Company for Seed Handling | | Al-Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range | UNMOVIC biological inspectors took samples from the remainders of containers used to transport biological agents (U.N. release, March 7). | | March 2-March 6 | See GSN, March 7. | |
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Iran’s nuclear facilities are much more advanced than previously thought, and some activities conducted there may have violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by testing uranium hexafluoride gas in some of its centrifuges, Time reported today (see GSN, March 5).
Tehran announced last week that it plans to activate a uranium-conversion facility, with IAEA safeguards in place, Time reported.
“If Iran were found to have an operating centrifuge, it would be a direct violation (of the Nonproliferation Treaty) and is something that would need immediately to be referred to the United Nations Security Council for action,” said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Diplomatic officials said recently that the uranium enrichment facility near Natanz is “extremely advanced” and includes “hundreds” of centrifuges (Massimo Calabresi, Time, March 17).
The Natanz facility contains 160 recently built centrifuges, the Washington Post reported. Iran is in the process of building 1,000 more centrifuges, with an end goal of 5,000, according to the Post.
The effort is due to be completed in 2005, the Post reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.
“Here we suddenly discover that Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had,” Powell said on CNN’s Late Edition. “It shows you how a determined nation that has the intent to develop a nuclear weapon can keep that development process secret from inspectors and outsiders, if they really are determined to do it,” he added.
Iran “is a country going full-bore on all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle,” said an administration official (Warrick/Kessler, Washington Post, March 10).
Israel is concerned about the development, Time reported. In 1981, Israeli forces attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak.
“It’s a huge concern,” said an Israeli official. “Iran is a regime that denies Israel’s right to exist in any borders and is a principal sponsor of Hezbollah. If that regime were able to achieve a nuclear potential, it would be extremely dangerous,” the official added.
Israel is not prepared to rule out the “Osirak option” the official said, but “would prefer that this issue be solved in other ways” (Calabresi, Time).
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is set to complete work on a plutonium trigger, or “pit,” for the W-88 nuclear warhead by late spring, a senior U.S. Energy Department official told a House Armed Services subcommittee last week (see GSN, Feb. 6).
The W-88 pit will be the first pit built since the Rocky Flats plutonium processing plant was closed in 1989, said Everet Beckner, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. The pit will be certified for use in U.S. weapons even though this production method has not been confirmed with test nuclear explosions. Beckner said the Energy Department has established nonexplosive testing methods, using developmental pits, to confirm their performance.
While Los Alamos’s pit production operations are proceeding well, Energy still believes a new pit production site is needed, Beckner said (see GSN, Sept. 20, 2002; Energy Daily, March 10).
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By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
BALTIMORE — The United States is preparing a number of research funding initiatives for fiscal 2004 to help develop new treatments and vaccines against potential biological weapons agents, according to the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (see GSN, Feb. 11).
The initiatives include current research funding programs that will be extended into the next fiscal year and new initiatives that the institute is currently preparing, said Rona Hirschberg, senior program officer at the institute’s Office of Biodefense Research Affairs, at a meeting yesterday of the American Society for Microbiology. Some initiatives under consideration could be further modified or eliminated altogether depending on the final fiscal 2004 budget, she said.
Some current research funding initiatives are being extended into fiscal 2004, Hirschberg said. These programs help fund basic research into biological agents, such as pathogen replication, animal modes of infection and host response. Funding will also continue for developing partnerships between academic researchers and private industry to help develop new diagnostics, treatments and vaccines; to aid small businesses seeking to develop new products to counter biological agents; and to fund increased training and career development opportunities for researchers. These training funds are important in order to increase the number of researchers knowledgeable in the area of biological defense, Hirschberg said. Funding is planned to aid new genomic research, she said.
In addition to extending current funding programs into the next fiscal year, the institute is also considering new fiscal 2004 research funding initiatives, Hirschberg said. These potential programs include increased funding for collaborative research between scientists from different disciplines, as well as private industry, to develop new treatments and vaccines. Initiatives are also being considered that would providing funding for research into new treatments against botulinum toxin and development of a second generation smallpox vaccine and useable plague vaccines, Hirschberg said.
All of the institute’s fiscal 2004 funding initiatives are focused on developing practical results, Hirschberg said. “That’s where we’re going to put our money,” she said.
For further information, see:
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Botulinum Toxin
CDC Basic Information About Botulism
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Plague
CDC Basic Information
CDC Smallpox Information
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Smallpox
The U.S. smallpox immunization program has severely hampered other aspects of public health planning and bioterrorism defense, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 7).
Communities across the United States have assigned large staffs to deal with smallpox immunization and in some cases large public health concerns are being ignored, the Post reported.
Seattle, for example, has seen a sudden rise in sexually transmitted diseases.
“We would have been on this faster and more effectively if I could have put a critical mass of infectious-disease people on this rather than on smallpox,” said Alonzo Plough, director of the Seattle and King County public health department. “We are stretched as thin as I have ever seen,” he said.
Last month the National Association of County and City Health Officials surveyed 539 health departments and 79 percent said the smallpox effort was detracting from other homeland defense initiatives. Half of the respondents said the departments said the smallpox immunizations were cutting into resources for traditional public health efforts.
“It’s been disruptive,” said association President Patrick Lenihan. “People who were doing routine health activities six months ago like taking blood pressures and assessing diabetes are now spending time preparing for smallpox vaccination and treatment,” he added.
U.S. health officials also said that the financial burden of the immunization program, beyond the initial phase, would be too great for states to shoulder without federal assistance.
The United States distributed $1 billion for bioterrorism defense last year and that money can be used for the first phase but “anything beyond that will be too much of a burden,” said Joe Henderson, associate director of terrorism preparedness and response for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, March 10).
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Russia must provide better security for its chemical weapons stockpile, according to Sergei Kiriyenko, who heads a Russian commission overseeing chemical weapons destruction (see GSN, March 5).
Kiriyenko, also an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said last week that existing security practices are not sufficient for terrorist threats.
“According to the government program, security measures are adequate, but that program was adopted before Sept. 11 (and) before the Nord-Ost tragedy,” he said, referring to the Moscow theater siege last October (see GSN, Jan. 24).
Kiriyenko said that despite official mandates, security at many facilities is still lacking.
“The commission demands that more money be spent on security, even if it means cutting spending in other areas,” he said (Reuters/Planet Ark, March 10).
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North Korea tested a short-range cruise missile today — the second such test in less than a month, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Feb. 26).
The missile is believed to be similar to the anti-ship missile North Korea tested late last month, said South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Kim Ki-beom (see GSN, Feb. 25). The missile was fired from Sinsang-ri and flew for 68 miles before falling into Sea of Japan, South Korean officials said.
There had been prior signs that North Korea was planning to conduct the test, AP reported. For example, the U.S. Defense Department earlier cited a North Korean warning for naval vessels to say out of an area off its eastern coast from Saturday to Tuesday (Christopher Torchia, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 10). Prior to the test, U.S. officials said they anticipated a North Korean test of its KN-01 short-range anti-ship missile, currently under development (CNN.com, March 10).
Today’s missile test could be an attempt by North Korea to further escalate tensions with the United States in the conflict over Pyongyang’s relaunched nuclear program, according to experts (see GSN, March 7).
“This is another show of North Korean brinkmanship,” said Yoon Dong-min, an expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. “They are trying to raise the stakes in the nuclear standoff and trying to get the upper hand ahead of possible talks with the United States,” Yoon said (Torchia, Associated Press).
Iraq today destroyed six banned al-Samoud 2 missiles and three warheads for the missiles, bringing the total of destroyed missiles to 52, U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said today (see GSN, March 6; Hassan Hafidh, Reuters, March 10).
Yesterday, Iraq destroyed six al-Samoud 2 missiles and 11 warheads, according to a U.N. press release (U.N. release, March 9). On Saturday, Iraq destroyed six of the banned missiles and three warheads (U.N. release, March 8).
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The U.S. oil company Halliburton has begun an investigation into the disappearance of radioactive materials used in its operations in Nigeria, Reuters reported today (see GSN, Feb. 27).
Halliburton officials said the material was stolen in early December. The materials were part of probe used in oil detection operations. The device was kept in locked storage box that weighs about 200 pounds.
The officials are concerned that the missing material could be used to construct a dirty bomb, according to the Wall Street Journal. If the missing material were combined with a pound of TNT and exploded, such a weapon could contaminate an area of up to 60 city blocks, according to an expert.
“We are working to locate this radioactive material and we’ve also made the public aware,” Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said (Reuters/Planet Ark, March 10).
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2002 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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