A former Iraqi nuclear scientist has provided U.S. intelligence officials with documents on Iraq’s nuclear program and gas centrifuge components, Bush administration officials and a nonproliferation think tank said yesterday (see GSN, June 25).
Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq’s uranium enrichment program, voluntarily gave the documents to U.S. officials in Baghdad and is now assisting in the U.S. search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, which advised Obeidi on his decision to surrender the materials (see GSN, May 5).
Obeidi gave U.S. officials several components of a gas centrifuge, along with design plans for the machines, said ISIS Assistant Director Corey Hinderstein. Obeidi buried the materials in his backyard in 1991 under orders from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay, according to the Washington Post.
The design plans provided by Obeidi would have saved Iraq considerable time in relaunching its nuclear program if Hussein had given an order to do so, Hinderstein said.
“If the order was given, these documents and materials could be used to restart the program. Obeidi did not receive that order,” Hinderstein said. “They would not have to start from scratch,” Hinderstein said. “Iraq would still have been years from making a weapon. But they would have saved themselves time, on the order of years,” she said (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, June 26).
Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, now assisting the CIA with the search for evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, said the case of Obeidi “begins to tell us how huge our job is.”
“Remember his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden,” Kay said in an interview with CNN. “There’s no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn’t have done it. My successors couldn’t have done it,” Kay said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, June 26).
The International Atomic Energy Agency said today that the materials provided by Obeidi were not “evidence of a smoking gun” proving Iraq had a nuclear weapons program prior to the recent war.
“The findings refer to material and documents of the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear weapons program that have been well-known to the agency,” IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
“The recovery of these items does not change our assessment of Iraq’s capabilities in the area of centrifuge enrichment. However, it does add greater detail to our understanding,” Gwozdecky said Caroline McDonald, CNN.com, June 26).
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, slated to be the next head of the U.S. Central Command, said yesterday that he expects biological and chemical weapons, as well as a nuclear weapons program, to be discovered in Iraq.
“I’m confident we will show that there was deception,” Abizaid said at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing. “And I am also confident that at some point it will lead us to actual weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
Abizaid said information provided by Iraqi sources, either voluntary or through interrogations with captured Iraq officials, would help the U.S. search.
“I believe that as we get on with the mission of continuing to look for weapons of mass destruction and piece together the evidence that is available within the country … by talking to various people that have come forward to give us information or people that we have detained that we’re asking for information, that we’ll piece together the story that tells us what happened to the weapons of mass destruction,” Abizaid said.
While praising the tactical- and operational-level intelligence provided to U.S. forces during the war, Abizaid said the U.S. strategic intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was “perplexingly incomplete.”
“It is perplexing to me, senator, that we have not found weapons of mass destruction, when the evidence was so pervasive that it would exist, “ Abizaid said.
Abizaid described for the committee meetings he had with his intelligence staff, in which he asked them if there were any doubts that weapons of mass destruction would be found. “To a man and to a woman, they all said we would find it. So the confidence of the intelligence professionals and my confidence in them was high, and actually it remains high,” he said.
Abizaid also said that, during the war, he believed Iraq was preparing to use biological or chemical weapons against U.S. troops, in part because of the quantities of Iraqi chemical defense equipment that was discovered.
“I surmise from them that they were certainly intending, somewhere in the campaign, to use weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) speculated that Iraq might not have had time to adequately prepare its chemical weapons for use. Abizaid said, however, that if the rapid U.S. advance had disrupted such preparations, then chemical weapons likely would have been discovered at storage depots. “But we’ve looked in the depots, and they’re not there,” Abizaid said.
Abizaid said U.S. forces had detected signs of activity at Iraqi depots prior to the war that were interpreted as signs of preparation of use. “It may very well have been that they had received the order quite to the contrary, to get rid of them,” he said (Federal News Service transcript, June 25).
Suspect Iraqi Trailers
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research has disputed CIA conclusions that two trailers discovered in Iraq were meant to be used as mobile biological facilities, U.S. officials said yesterday (see GSN, June 23).
In a classified June 2 memorandum, the bureau said it was too early to conclude that the trailers were evidence of a biological weapons program. Bush administration officials said the State memorandum raised an argument that each of the two recovered trailers was only a component in what the CIA report said were two- or three-trailer systems needed to manufacture weapons. The other trailers have not yet been found, according to the New York Times. The State memorandum considered as credible that trailers might have been intended for use in refueling Iraqi ballistic missiles, an administration official said.
The CIA, along with the Defense Intelligence Agency, made their conclusions on the trailers public in a report released late last month. The CIA and DIA, however, did not consult with other agencies before releasing the report, officials said.
A CIA official said the agency did not need to consult with other agencies on the report because it and the DIA had the most experience with the trailers.
“We didn’t shop that paper around because we were the ones who were most knowledgeable about it,” the CIA official said. “We were the ones who knew from a former Iraqi scientist what to expect, and we didn’t have to ask a handful of people in small agencies,” the official said (Douglas Jehl, New York Times, June 26).
British Intelligence
Alastair Campbell, communications director for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said yesterday that the British government had made a mistake in including information from a graduate thesis found on the Internet in a report on Iraq’s weapons capability.
The inclusion of the material into a February report was “regrettable,” Campbell said before the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He said, however, that the February report was not as important as one released in September on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — a report that has come under criticism for allegedly containing exaggerated information.
The September report “was a serious, thorough piece of work setting out why it was so vital to tackle Saddam and WMD (weapons of mass destruction). The second paper (in February) was not,” Campbell said (Jane Wardell, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26).
Campbell yesterday denied allegations, made by BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan, that he had inflated the September report by inserting a claim against the advice of the intelligence services, that Iraqi forces could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so (see GSN, May 29).
“I simply say in relation to the BBC story it is a lie ... that is continually repeated, and until we get an apology for it I will keep making sure that parliament and people like yourselves know that it was a lie,” Campbell said.
The BBC issued a statement defending Gilligan and his intelligence sources. “We do not feel the BBC has anything to apologize for,” it said (Wintour/White, London Guardian, June 26).
Australia will host an 11-nation nonproliferation summit next month, Reuters reported today (see GSN, June 12).
The two-day meeting Proliferation Security Initiative meeting is scheduled to begin July 9 and will include Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States. Australian officials said they hoped China would assist the group, which met previously in Madrid June 12.
During that session, the group focused on efforts to curb the North Korean proliferation of missiles and weapons technology.
“This is inevitably going to involve very substantial cooperation between key countries, and China is absolutely going to be one of the countries in time,” said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
The bloc of nations will attempt to recruit other members to join the nonproliferation effort, Downer said (Reuters/MSNBC.com, June 26).
India is considering building underground bunkers to protect members of parliament from a WMD attack, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, May 23).
The Joint Parliamentary Committee held discussions yesterday with Indian military officials about building two bunkers beneath the parliament to shield lawmakers in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. Key Indian government facilities were designated high-security areas after a Dec. 13, 2001, attack that left five attackers and 10 others dead at the parliament.
Security measures at the parliamentary complex are still under review, according to a report today in the Hindustan Times (Agence France-Presse, June 26).
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said yesterday that India should take greater responsibility for easing tensions between the two nuclear rivals and for bringing peace to South Asia (see GSN, June 24).
The “onus” of peace in the region is on India because it is the larger country, Musharraf said during a speech at the Capitol Hilton hotel in Washington. If a large country over-compromises on certain issues in the name of peace, it is seen as greatness; while if a smaller country were to do the same, it would be seen as a sign of weakness, Musharraf said, adding that Pakistan would also work for peace.
Musharraf praised recent progress in India-Pakistani relations, saying they are “at last showing some prospect of movement.” He added that he welcomed a number of recent statements made by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the role the United States has played in the region, both of which have helped to reduce tensions.
Musharraf said he looked forward to a resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan. Pakistan hopes to be able to work with India on a basis of “sovereign equality,” he said, adding that Pakistan could not compromise on this point. Musharraf also said that he and Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali were ready to acknowledge Vajpayee as a “partner” in any peace process.
Musharraf reiterated his multiple-stage approach for an Indian-Pakistani peace process, which he said would have to begin with a resumption of dialogue. “We don’t even play cricket,” he said.
India and Pakistan also would both have to accept that the disputed province of Kashmir is the main issue to be resolved for greater peace. According to recent media reports, Musharraf has criticized Indian suggestions that Kashmir is only one of several issues the two countries need to resolve.
While saying that Pakistan does not “believe in violence as a means to peace,” Musharraf appeared to offer tacit support for Islamic militants in Kashmir — militants that India has called on Pakistan to do more to prevent the militants’ infiltration into Kashmir.
“We know militancy is often a response to state repression and a refusal to countenance peaceful political movements of protests on behalf of rights that have been denied,” Musharraf said.
According to Indian media reports, U.S. President George W. Bush called on Musharraf during a meeting earlier this week at Camp David to do more to stop cross-border terrorism.
“I think the president put it about as well as anybody can, which is what we expect and what we think Musharraf needs to commit to — and we think he has committed to — is a hundred percent effort at trying to stop cross-border incidents. I’ll leave it at that,” The Hindu quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying.
Musharraf yesterday rejected a suggestion put forth by a member of the audience at his address in Washington that the Line of Control dividing Kashmir be made a permanent border. “The two countries have fought three wars on the Line of Control — now how can LoC, a dispute, can be a solution of the issue?” the Business Recorder reported.
Proliferation Concerns
In his address yesterday, Musharraf once again denied allegations that Pakistan has sent nuclear technology to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missile technology, saying such allegations were the “story of the past” and a “closed chapter” (see GSN, April 2). He pledged that Pakistan would never proliferate nuclear or missile technologies and that it would not receive such technologies from other countries.
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program is self-sufficient, Musharraf said. “Our scientists are capable enough,” he added.
U.S. Aid to Pakistan
Musharraf also denied yesterday that a proposed U.S. five-year, $3 billion economic and security assistance package was linked to proliferation concerns. Bush announced the aid proposal Tuesday during a joint conference with Musharraf following their Camp David meeting.
A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday, however, that Pakistan would have to cooperate with the United States in several areas, including ensuring against future proliferation, to receive the proposed aid.
“I’m not calling those ‘conditions,’ but let’s be realistic, three years down the road, if things are going badly in those areas, it’s not going to happen. We’re not going to request it, Congress won’t appropriate it. And that is a bargain that the Pakistanis are entering into with their eyes wide open,” the senior administration official said.
In announcing the assistance proposal, Bush said that defense aid would not include the sale of new F-16 fighters to Pakistan — long a sticking point in U.S.-Pakistani relations. The senior administration official said, however, that Pakistan is expected to request upgrades and repairs for their existing fleet of an estimated 32 F-16s — a request the United States is “perfectly willing to consider.”
“But, frankly, there is just too much other stuff that Pakistan needs right now for us to go into the business of new F-16s,” the official said.
The United States and the European Union released a joint nonproliferation statement yesterday that expressed “serious concern” over Iran’s nuclear development and pushing Tehran to agree to more intrusive inspections (see GSN, June 25).
“We are troubled by the information in the IAEA’s [International Atomic Energy Agency’s] report detailing Iran’s failures to meet its safeguards obligations, and we fully support ongoing investigation by the IAEA to answer the unresolved questions and concerns identified in that report,” the joint statement said.
The United States has alleged that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge that Tehran denies. The statement said Iran must sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, granting intrusive inspections of nuclear activities, without “conditions.”
While singling out Iran and North Korea, the statement primarily addresses broader nonproliferation goals.
“We pledge to use all means available to avert WMD proliferation and the calamities that would follow,” the statement says.
Echoing recent initiatives to crack down on international WMD shipments (see related GSN story, today), the statement adds, “We will strengthen identification, control and interdiction of illegal shipments, including national criminal sanctions against those who contribute to illicit procurement efforts (White House release, June 25).
U.S. officials were enthusiastic about the statement, which did not direct any specific threats or deadlines to Iran (Judy Dempsey, Financial Times, June 25).
“I don’t want to oversell this, but we have something we can work with,” said an administration official. “It was the first time they used the word ‘interdiction,’” the official added (Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, June 26).
U.S. President George W. Bush, however, was more pointed in his comments.
“Iran must comply. I mean, the free world expects Iran to comply. Just leave it at that,” Bush said. The president also specifically supported the Additional Protocol as a sign of Iranian cooperation.
“If they don’t [comply], we’ll deal with that when they don’t,” Bush said.
Iranian officials criticized the U.S. effort.
“The U.S. approach to Iran is one of threats and seeking concessions, in other words forcing Iran to accept its unlawful demands,” said Iranian Defense Minister Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani. “The reason why the U.S. is pressuring the IAEA … is to escape from its claims on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that it has not found,” he added (Joseph Curl, Washington Times, June 26).
Russian Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Sergei Antipov has said that Russia is seeking increased British aid for a joint program to dispose of Russian nuclear submarines, Interfax reported Tuesday (see GSN, May 22).
The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry hopes to reach an agreement with the United Kingdom in the near future on expanded cooperation in Russian submarine disposal efforts, including increased equipment and financial support, Antipov said. The United Kingdom is aiding Russia’s submarine disposal efforts through the Group of Eight’s Global Partnership program, which seeks to fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia (see GSN, June 6; Interfax, June 24 in FBIS-SOV, June 24).
| 
Back to top
