The United States has begun a surveillance campaign against U.N. Security Council diplomats in an effort to obtain information on how they might vote on a U.S.-British supported resolution on Iraq, the London Observer reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 28).
The surveillance campaign was outlined in a memo prepared by Frank Koza, chief of staff in the Regional Targets section of the U.S. National Security Agency, according to the Observer. The memo, dated Jan. 31, directed agency staff to increase surveillance operations directed at Security Council members, with the exception of the United Kingdom, to determine their voting intentions. It also advised agency officials that information was wanted on policies, negotiating positions and alliances — the “whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises.”
There had been debate within the White House over launching the operation, which was requested by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said sources in Washington. Some Bush administration officials warned of the serious consequences that could result if the operation was discovered, the Observer reported (London Observer, March 2).
Blix’s Latest Report
The latest report on Iraq’s disarmament from chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix makes a harsher evaluation of Iraq’s cooperation than has previous reports. “The results in terms of disarmament have been very limited so far,” Blix wrote in the report, which was distributed to Security Council members and journalists Friday afternoon.
“Iraq could have made greater efforts to find any remaining proscribed items or provide credible evidence showing the absence of such items,” Blix wrote. “It is hard to understand why a number of the measures, which are now being taken, could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now.”
While this part of the report bolsters the U.S. position that Iraq will never voluntarily disarm, the document also details areas where Iraq has been cooperating with inspectors, giving something to governments that want to give UNMOVIC more time. The report envisions a work program that extends beyond the end of March, what is generally viewed as the deadline for the beginning of military action against Iraq.
“Without the required cooperation, disarmament and its verification will be problematic,” Blix wrote. “However, even with the requisite cooperation it will inevitably require some time.”
The report was written before Iraq agreed to destroy its al-Samoud 2 missiles, which Blix on Friday called “a very significant piece of real disarmament” (see related GSN story, today).
Continuing a theme from earlier reports, Blix distinguished between Iraqi cooperation on process and substance. On process, such as providing access to sites, “in general, Iraq has been helpful,” he wrote. But on substance, such as providing information on illegal weapons of mass destruction, the report says Iraq has been less forthcoming. The 12,000-page Dec. 7 declaration from Iraq on its programs for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missile “has not been found to provide new evidence or data that may help to resolve outstanding disarmament issues,” other than information on the al-Samoud 2 missiles, according to the report.
Blix said on most access questions, including use of helicopters and surveillance aircraft, Iraq was cooperating. However, on giving UNMOVIC unrestricted access to scientists, “the reality is that, so far, no persons not nominated by the Iraqi side have been willing to be interviewed without a tape recorder running or an Iraqi witness present.”
Another issue is the list Iraq provided of people involved in what Baghdad described as the unilateral destruction of chemical and biological weapons Iraq was known to have at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. A batch of documents Iraq has provided that is supposed to detail that destruction is still being examined. On that topic, Blix wrote, “It is not possible to know whether they will prove to be a successful way to reduce uncertainty about the quantities unilaterally destroyed.”
Although the United States is sending strong signals that it will push for a decision on its draft resolution within weeks, Blix lays out a program of work in the report that goes on at least until the end of March. UNMOVIC is completing “an internal document of some importance,” Blix wrote, which is a list of unresolved disarmament issues “and of the measures which Iraq could take to resolve them.” This list of “key remaining disarmament tasks” is required by Resolution 1284 and could “serve as a yardstick against which Iraq’s disarmament actions under Resolution 1441 may be measured,” wrote Blix.
He is scheduled to brief the Security Council on his latest report, and developments that have occurred since, on March 7 (Jim Wurst, Global Security Newswire, March 3).
Iraq to Prove VX, Anthrax Destruction
Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that Iraq will submit a new report on its stockpiles of VX chemical agent and anthrax within a week.
Iraqi officials and U.N. experts discussed yesterday Iraq’s proposal to submit “quantitative verification” that it has destroyed its VX and anthrax stockpiles. Iraq has been accused of failing to provide adequate information as to the destruction of banned weapons and materials.
“Iraq will be providing a report on the VX and anthrax in a week’s time,” U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said (Nadim Ladki, Reuters, March 3).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors Friday conducted a private interview with an Iraqi biologist, the first non-nuclear-related interview since Feb. 7, Ueki said Saturday. Previously, Iraqi chemical and biological scientists had refused to grant interviews without recording the conversations. Ueki indicated that Friday’s interview was not taped (Associated Press/New York Times, March 2).
U.N. inspectors visited at least six suspect Iraq sites today, according to the Associated Press. Inspectors visited a chemical and explosives plant, a rocket factory, two import companies and a plastics factory. They also visited al-Aziziya, where Iraq has said it destroyed bombs filled with biological agents in 1991 (Bassem Mroue, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 3).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix’s current Security Council report (New York Times)
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A new report provides unprecedented detail into official U.S. support for the Iraqi military in the early 1980s despite U.S. intelligence reports describing “almost daily” Iraqi chemical weapons attacks against Iranian forces, and other activities currently cited by the Bush administration as justification for a possible war on Iraq.
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein, which draws on 61 declassified government documents and was published on the Internet last week by the nonprofit research organization the National Security Archive, concludes the Reagan administration chose to play down Iraq’s chemical weapons usage in favor of the maintaining good U.S.-Iraqi relations.
“Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance,” the report says.
Furthermore, it says the Reagan administration pursued the relationship despite knowledge of Iraqi human rights abuses, harboring of terrorists, and an interest in developing nuclear weapons.
“The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein], he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would ‘probably’ include ‘an eventual nuclear capability,’ harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people,” said a press release accompanying the report.
The Bush administration currently is massing forces for a possible war against Iraq and is justifying its actions by citing many of those same issues. Two key differences in circumstances today, however, are that the United States and Iraq became outright enemies in 1990 after Iraq attacked Kuwait, kicking off the Gulf War, and that Iraq has for more than 10 years apparently failed to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding disarmament and other issues.
Joyce Battle, who edited the report, said the documents have relevance for the situation today.
“If the U.S. goes to war with Iraq, many people will be put in harm’s way, and I think that we all should seek some understanding of earlier developments and policies that led us to the current situation,” she wrote in a publicized Internet chat to discuss the report.
She said the contrast between the Reagan administration’s condemnation of Iraqi chemical weapons use and its continued support of Iraq, “encouraged Saddam Hussein to believe that the United States did not really believe, or act on, its public posture.”
The report says the documents offer a noteworthy contrast between the reasoning currently offered by the Bush administration for its preparations for a possible war on Iraq and the policies pursued by Washington in the early 1980s.
“The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a pre-emptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a ‘just war,’” it says.
“The documents in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country’s policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. … The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing,” it said.
U.S. Opposed Regime Change Goal
Perhaps the most striking contrast between the policies of the Bush and Reagan administrations is their declared policies regarding regime change in Baghdad.
The report includes a 1984 State Department press release that for the first time publicly condemned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons on Iranian forces, but which also condemned Iran’s goal of regime change in Baghdad.
“While condemning Iraq’s chemical weapons use … the United States finds the present Iranian regime’s intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims,” it said.
The report says, though, “When asked whether the U.S.’s conclusion that Iraq had used chemical weapons would have ‘any effect on U.S. recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with Iraq across a broad range, and also a willingness to open diplomatic relations,’ the department’s spokesperson said ‘No. I’m not aware of any change in our position. We’re interested in being involved in a closer dialogue with Iraq.’”
Subsequent reporting has shown that the United States continued from 1986 to 1988 to allow then-legal, dual-use technology exports to Iraq that could aid its chemical and biological warfare efforts, such as bacterial strains for causing anthrax and gas gangrene, and for making botulinum toxin (see GSN, Oct. 2, 2002).
Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a hearing last September, “Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?”
Oil, Regional Balance a Concern
Named for a now famous secret 1983 meeting between then-U.S. special envoy Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein and including a photograph of that encounter, the report provides copies of 61 declassified documents offering details on the U.S.-Iraqi relationship from 1980 to 1984, most of which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Rumsfeld, then a former defense secretary, met with Hussein carrying a letter from [President Ronald] Reagan to Hussein, on a mission to bring the two governments closer together.
The report shows that the Reagan administration was concerned greatly with preventing a disruption in the Persian Gulf oil flow and an Iraqi defeat, or a collapse of Hussein’s regime, by fundamentalist Islamic Iran.
The report cites National Security Decision Directive 114 on the Iran-Iraq War, issued by Reagan in November 1983, which said the highest U.S. priority was to protect Gulf oil facilities. Not only at the time was there a concern Iran would defeat Iraq and gain greater control of the world’s oil, there was a concern Iraq would attempt to disrupt the oil flow to draw in greater powers to put an end to the conflict.
The United States had no formal relations with Iraq since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Iraq severed them. Hussein came to power, first as vice president, around 1968. In the early 1980s, the United States had an official policy of neutrality toward Iran and Iraq as they waged war.
U.S. commerce with Iraq continued however, and there were signs of a thawing in U.S.-Iraqi government relations as early as 1981, with the scheduled visit of a State Department official to Baghdad and the U.S. interests section there declaring that the United States then had “a greater convergence of interests with Iraq than at any time since the revolution of 1958,” according to one document.
Despite Persistent Terrorist Ties
In 1982, the State Department removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting international terrorism. Still, in 1983, the State Department continued to urge Iraq to sever association with suspected terrorist groups.
In May of that year, for instance, Secretary of State George Shultz sent a message to senior Iraqi official Tariq Aziz implying Iraq should dissociate itself from certain Palestinian groups it had supported, which he observed opposed both the U.S. and Iraqi governments.
He added, “Several recent events lead me to believe that Iraq hesitates to cut its threads to international terrorists.”
An October 1983 State Department report indicated the United States had covertly been practicing a “qualified tilt” toward Iraq, which included providing tactical intelligence and more to help prevent an Iraqi defeat.
While U.S. policy barred military exports to Iraq, the report says the documents show U.S. companies were allowed to negotiate for potential deals to export potentially dual-use items such as trucks and helicopters to the Iraqi military.
“Although official U.S. policy still barred the export of U.S. military equipment to Iraq, some was evidently provided on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis,” it says.
In the spring of 1984, the administration deliberated on relaxing controls on dual-use exports judged “insignificant” for Iraq’s civilian nuclear agency, one document shows. A preliminary review, the document said, decided favorably towards relaxing the controls.
A Defense Intelligence Agency report several months later warned that Iraq would probably “continue to develop its formidable conventional and chemical capability, and probably pursue nuclear weapons,” by first developing its civil nuclear program.
Priorities Faulted
The National Security Archives report faulted the Reagan administration largely for a lack of emphasis it said was placed on the chemical weapons issue.
It says a 1984 directive expressed a determination to “avert an Iraqi collapse,” while also calling for “unambiguous” condemnation of chemical weapons use. It faulted the document, however, for not calling for specific condemnation of Iraqi chemical warfare and for “including the caveat that the U.S. should ‘place equal stress on the urgent need to dissuade Iran from continuing the ruthless and inhumane tactics which have characterized recent offensives.’”
The report criticized the previously noted National Security Decision Directive 114, which addressed the administration concern about preserving the oil flow, for not including a “reference to chemical weapons.”
The report also suggests Iraq persuaded the Reagan administration to water down a proposed U.N. Security Council condemnation of Iraq’s chemical weapons use in Iraq.
Iraq’s senior diplomat in Washington urged the Security Council to issue a presidential statement, rather than a resolution, and that it not mention any country regarding chemical weapons use.
An official said the United States could accept the Iraqi proposals if the Security Council went along and asked for the Iraqi government’s help “in avoiding … embarrassing situation[s]” and said the U.S. did “not want this issue to dominate our bilateral relationship.”
After the statement was issued, a State Department memo later noted, “The statement, by the way contains all three elements [the Iraqi diplomat] wanted.”
The report also contained a previously reported cable record of the 90-minute Rumsfeld-Hussein meeting, which, it says, contradicts a recent account of the meeting by Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld on Sept. 21, 2001, claimed he had “cautioned” Hussein during the meeting about using chemical weapons.
“Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and the U.S.’s efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq’s oil; its facilities in the Persian Gulf had been shut down by Iran, and Iran’s ally, Syria, had cut off a pipeline that transported Iraqi oil through its territory,” the report said.
“Rumsfeld made no reference to chemical weapons, according to detailed notes on the meeting,” it said, adding Rumsfeld raised the issue in a subsequent meeting with Aziz.
By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A member of the House Armed Services Committee last week called on U.S. lawmakers to triple nonproliferation funding (see GSN, Feb. 27).
Washington should be promoting nonproliferation programs and avoiding efforts to develop new nuclear weapons, according to Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who spoke Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Energy Facilities Contractors Group.
Tauscher criticized the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, released January 2002, which diminishes the importance of nuclear retaliation but keeps alive the possibility of new U.S. nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield.
“Rather than improve on past accomplishments, the United States is currently in a pattern of rejecting treaties, has put forth a Nuclear Posture Review that seems divorced from reality, and is making only paltry investments in nuclear nonproliferation,” Tauscher said.
The United States should triple its nonproliferation budget and spend $30 billion over the next decade, she said.
“To put this in perspective, for less than 1 percent of what the U.S. currently spends on defense, we can eliminate the risk of these deadly weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states,” according to Tauscher.
The Nuclear Threat Reduction Campaign, a nonprofit advocacy group, has pushed the same initiative, calling for nonproliferation funding roughly equal to 1 percent of the Pentagon budget. Former Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth, a senior adviser to the group, made the 1 percent appeal Wednesday at a conference held by the Center for Defense Information and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Congressional Support
Inderfurth, currently a professor at George Washington University, said that support for threat reduction campaigns and nonproliferation funding must be directed toward Congress.
“That is the place we can get traction to do some of the things we want to do,” he said.
The 1 percent message catches the ear of public groups, but it is “also resonating on the Hill,” NTRC Director Brian Finlay told Global Security Newswire.
Speaking on the panel with Inderfurth, the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Laura Holgate said that concerned arms control advocates must hold elected officials responsible for supporting arms control programs, such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
“I like to say that Nunn-Lugar has destroyed way more Soviet missiles than even the wildest claims of missile defense,” she said.
Tauscher Criticizes Moscow Treaty
Tauscher said that the Moscow Treaty, officially known as the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, could decrease international security.
“To make matters much worse, the new Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty will, ironically, make nuclear security problems worse because it does not commit either nation to actually destroying a single nuclear weapon. Instead, it will allow the United States and Russia to merely store weapons — like putting a car on blocks in a garage — leaving more nuclear parts in more locations where they will likely be less secure,” she said.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]
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. 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 3 | Chemical and explosives plant | See GSN, March 3. | | Rocket factory | | Import company | | Import company | | Plastics factory | | Al-Aziziya | | Feb. 21-28 | See GSN, Feb. 28. | |
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White House officials and intelligence experts expect North Korea to activate its nuclear reprocessing plant in the next few weeks, the New York Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 28).
Officials said the reactivation of the plant, where North Korea could separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, could be timed to coincide with the beginning of military action in Iraq.
“Once they start reprocessing, it’s a bomb a month from now until summer,” said a senior official.
Current and former defense and security officials have told the White House that the current policy — of refusing negotiations until North Korea begins to disarm — is failing and direct negotiations might be necessary, the Times reported. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Congress last month that the United States should engage in “a bilateral discussion” with North Korea under “a multilateral umbrella, of any sort” (see GSN, Feb. 5).
“Off-the-Wall Angry”
Armitage also commended the 1994 Agreed Framework that froze North Korean plutonium production activities until this year, but his comments left U.S. President George W. Bush “off-the-wall angry,” according to a senior administration official. Several White House officials supported that account of Bush’s reaction.
Following Armitage’s testimony, Bush told Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials that he was forbidding public discussion of direct talks with North Korea, the Times reported (David Sanger, New York Times, March 1).
Nuclear Reactor Project Paused
Meanwhile, South Korea, Japan and the United States recently decided to delay acquiring key components needed to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea, the Korea Times reported today. The countries are all executive board members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, the institution created to build two nuclear reactors as part of the 1994 agreement.
A senior Korean Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry official called the move a slowdown in the project, which will be followed with an official statement on the future of the effort (Korea Times, March 3).
“No final agreement has yet been made whether to slow down the whole project or part of it, or to freeze it. This will be discussed according to North Korea’s future moves,” a Korean official said yesterday (Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, March 3).
Security at the Russia’s Mayak nuclear weapons complex remains inadequate despite more than $458 million in U.S. funds intended to secure fissile material there, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reported last month (see GSN, Feb. 21).
U.S. and Russian contractors are building a $350 million warehouse at Mayak to store plutonium, the Rocky Mountain News reported.
Experts said the plant has a record of poor security.
“They bent down and pulled out a bucket of plutonium and handed it to me,” said Rose Gottemoeller, former Energy Department deputy undersecretary for nonproliferation. The complex had plutonium stored in areas with broken wood doors and smashed windows but has remedied some problems, she said.
Pavel Oleinikov, who lived near Mayak but now works in nonproliferation, said that large security holes remain.
“A high-level manager can supersede all regulations, and say, ‘Let’s ship it to our new commercial partner in North Korea,” he said (Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 22).
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U.S. Marines stationed in the Persian Gulf region plan to use live chickens to help detect a chemical weapons attack, Knight-Ridder News Service reported today (see GSN, Feb. 7).
“They will be like the proverbial canary in the coal mine,” said Lt. Col. Rob Abbott, commander of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi troops set oil wells on fire, which resulted in the release of hydrogen sulfide — a mustard gas component. This led to U.S. troops mistakenly thinking they had been attacked with chemical weapons, a mistake the chickens are meant to prevent, Abbott said.
The chicken plan has hit an early problem, however, according to Knight-Ridder. Out of the first shipment, all but one of the chickens died within the first week, but more on their way.
Soldiers offered no remorse for sacrificing the chickens. “It’s the chickens or me,” said Joe Santos, chief warrant officer of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion (Patrick Peterson, Knight-Ridder/San Jose Mercury News, March 3).
The U.S. Army will not begin destroying chemical weapons agents at the Anniston Army Depot incinerator in Alabama until local officials are more prepared to respond in the event of an emergency, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 6, 2002).
The depot stores 2,254 tons of chemical agents, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
While no startup date has been scheduled yet, it is hoped that local officials can quickly resolve any remaining emergency preparedness issues, said Michael Parker, interim director of the Chemical Materials Agency, responsible for the chemical weapons disposal effort. Mike Burney, director of the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, said he hoped all response measures would be in place by October.
The Army is also working to meet a series of benchmarks included in a letter sent by Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to the secretary of the Army in January, Parker said. Those benchmarks include increased funding for additional protective measures for vulnerable groups of people and responsibility for activating a siren system in the event of an incident at the depot (Associated Press/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2).
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Iraq is set to destroy at least seven of its banned al-Samoud 2 missiles today, bringing the total destroyed since Saturday to 17. Iraqi officials warned, however, that the destruction effort could stop if the United States continues to press for war (see GSN, Feb. 28).
Iraq plans to destroy between seven and nine of the missiles today, said Odai al-Taie, an official in the Iraq Information Ministry (Bassem Mroue, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 3).
Iraq destroyed six missiles yesterday in the presence of U.N. inspectors, in addition to four Saturday, said Iraqi presidential adviser Gen. Amir Saadi. He added that Iraq hoped to continue that pace over the next several days. Iraq has about 100 operational al-Samoud 2 missiles and another 20 in various stages of construction, Saadi said. At the current rate of destruction, it should take about three weeks for Iraq to destroy all of the banned missiles, according to the Washington Post (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, March 3).
The missiles are being destroyed at the Taji military site, north of Baghdad, according to the Los Angeles Times. Iraqi officials have refused to allow reporters to observe the destruction, saying pictures of the event would hurt many Iraqis personally.
Showing the missile destruction “would be in the interest of Iraq” to demonstrate its willingness to comply with U.N. orders, Saadi said. “But from previous experience, we know such pictures would be painful to the Iraqi people,” he said.
Saadi warned, however, that Iraq could stop destroying the missiles if the United States continued to plan to invade without U.N. approval.
“If it turns out during an early stage this month that America is not going the legal way, then why should we continue?” he asked (Joyn Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times, March 3).
Iraq began the missile destruction effort on Saturday, when it destroyed the first group of four by crushing them with a bulldozer, according to the New York Times. The United Nations would have preferred that the missiles were destroyed with explosives, but Iraq choose to crush them, said Demetrius Perricos, deputy U.N. weapons inspector.
Iraq also began destroying Saturday one of the two casting chambers used to produce solid rocket propellant and engines for other short-range missiles, Perricos said.
“All the missiles that are presently deployed, all the missiles in a state where they are ready to be deployed and all the parts and components are also to be destroyed,” he said (Neil MacFarquahar, New York Times, March 2).
U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix Friday praised Iraq’s decision to abide by the U.N. order to destroy the al-Samoud 2 missiles, saying Iraq’s action represented “a very significant piece of real disarmament” (U.N. release, Feb. 28).
Iraqi Murder Mystery
Meanwhile, Western intelligence agencies are investigating claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered the murder of a senior missile engineer to prevent him from speaking with U.N. inspectors, according to the London Telegraph.
Gen. Muhammad Sa’id al-Darraj, who led Iraq’s mobile Scud missile force until three months ago, died a day after meeting with Iraqi officials, according to Arab newspaper reports. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how al-Darraj would conceal what he knew of Iraq’s missile efforts if interviewed by inspectors, the Telegraph reported.
Al-Darraj reportedly told relatives that he had been given a poisoned drink during the meeting, which took place at one of Hussein’s presidential palaces, according to the Telegraph.
British officials said yesterday that they were attempting to verify the claim (Wastell/Coman, London Telegraph, March 2).
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The U.S. Missile Defense Agency recently expanded the Airborne Laser’s requirements — the system must now be able to down intercontinental ballistic missiles — but the laser is already 5,000 pounds overweight and contractors have only produced six of 14 modules, Defense News reported today (see GSN, Jan. 6).
The system must weigh less than 175,000 pounds to be carried by a modified Boeing 747 cargo plane, but the first six components already weigh 180,000 pounds, U.S. officials said.
The system can still operate without the full complement of modules, but the laser beam would be weaker and the plane would need to fly closer to targets to be effective, according to Kumar Patel, a University of California physics professor.
Pentagon officials met Feb. 26 to discuss reducing the weight of the components, improving the laser’s optics and boosting the output of the existing components.
The weight issues would not affect the program’s survival, however. “The promise of ABL in the larger context of U.S. strategic defense has, at this point, convinced everyone that it’s got to move ahead into fielding,” a senior Pentagon official said (Ratnam/Kaufman, Defense News, March 3).
Northrop Grumman’s Space Technology sector, meanwhile, delivered the Beacon Illuminator Laser to the Airborne Laser project. The newly delivered component is designed to measure atmospheric changes that could throw off the Airborne Laser’s beam (Space & Missile, March 3).
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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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