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Iraq I: Bush Administration Considers Offering Better Data to InspectorsThe U.S. National Security Council is debating whether to provide more sensitive intelligence information to U.N. weapons inspectors, according to senior Bush administration officials. Officials are trying to determine what is the best way to convince U.N. Security Council members that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, the Washington Post reported Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 10). “The White House is trying to decide what to lay out to inspectors before they report on Jan. 27 or whether to wait and do it after,” an official said. “If we then go forward (attacking Iraq), the question also is how much leg do you show ahead of time,” the official added. The Bush administration has realized that it will need to present evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or noncompliance with inspectors before developing an international coalition for any military action, senior officials said. U.S. Defense Department officials want to keep information on Iraqi WMD sites, however, because they would be among the first targets during an U.S. attack, officials said. If the sites are revealed beforehand, Iraq might attempt to move the weapons, they said. Another issue in the debate is whether the release of more intelligence information could endanger sources or technical collection systems, according to the Post. “It all comes down to weighing revealing sources and methods versus making a public case,” a senior Bush administration official said. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that the United States has begun providing inspectors with information and is reviewing other sensitive information that could be presented to U.N. inspectors if they fail to find conclusive evidence of Iraq’s WMD efforts, the Post reported. A senior official familiar with the information given to inspectors, however, described it as “not that good,” adding, “I don’t expect anything dramatic before Jan. 27.” The U.S. information provided to inspectors has mostly been general in nature, but has included satellite photographs of suspected WMD storage sites, according to former inspectors familiar with the current system. Only chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and his top intelligence aide James Corcoran, former head of Canada’s intelligence service, initially review the information, which is then distributed to inspectors within Iraq who do not know its source, the Post reported (Pincus/DeYoung, Washington Post, Jan. 11). Timeline Meanwhile, the United States and other U.N. Security Council members are discussing setting a deadline for Iraq to demonstrate its compliance with U.N. resolutions, according to the New York Times. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are scheduled to brief the Security Council Jan. 27 on the progress of inspections, as called for under the U.N. resolution establishing the inspections regime. White House officials have said the resolution could be interpreted to mean that Iraq has until then to demonstrate that it has fully cooperated with inspections and has disclosed all of its WMD programs, the Times reported. Other Security Council members, however, have disagreed that the Jan. 27 briefing should be seen as a deadline, according to the Times. Diplomats from France and Russia — two of the five permanent council members — have said the resolution contains no deadline at all. “We are not in the business of building up military,” said Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov. “We’re in the business of listening to the inspectors, the professionals,” he said. British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament last week that Jan. 27 was not a deadline and that inspectors needed “space and time” to carry out their work. British officials said they would attempt to convince the United States that inspectors would have more success finding incriminating evidence if they were given more time (Julia Preston, New York Times, Jan. 13). The IAEA believes that weapons inspectors need about a year to conduct complete operations within Iraq, agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. “For a credible inspection process we believe we do need in the vicinity of a year,” he said in an interview with BBC News. “It’s a very large country, there is a lot of terrain to cover, a lot of facilities to inspect,” Gwozdecky said. The IAEA is confident that it will be able to find any evidence of Iraq’s nuclear weapons efforts, Gwozdecky said. “Given the fairly good access we’ve been given to date, we can — the longer we’re there — have a real role to play in terms of detecting anything illegal,” he said. “Isn’t a year worth the wait to get a sustainable, long-term peaceful solution to this problem?” Gwozdecky added (BBC News, Jan. 13). ElBaradei is scheduled to visit Russia for three days beginning tomorrow to meet with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and senior Russian Atomic Energy Ministry officials, according to Kyodo News (Kyodo News/Japan Today, Jan. 13). U.S. War Preparations As the Security Council debates the possible start of military action against Iraq, the United States has been increasing the number of its troops and equipment in the Persian Gulf region, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Jan. 7). The U.S. force being assembled in the region would be in a position to attack Iraq in the latter part of February and could have more than 150,000 troops, according to military officials. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has signed two deployment orders since Friday — sending about 62,000 troops to the region, the Times reported. Rumsfeld also signed a deployment order last month that dispatched about 25,000 troops to the Middle East. The U.S. Central Command sent the first component of a 1,000-member battle staff last week to what could be its wartime headquarters in Qatar. “We’re going to continue a steady deliberate buildup to provide the president the flexibility he needs to do what he thinks he needs to do,” said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is expected to take several weeks to assemble the full U.S. military force throughout the Gulf region, in countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and, possibly, Turkey, although the troops currently in the region could attack if ordered to do so, officials said. “By mid- to late February, we’ll be in the best position to provide the president immediate flexible options to respond,” a senior military official said. The best time to attack Iraq is a period between mid-February and early April, military experts said. “If you go past March, you get into some really hot weather,” said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command. “How long do you keep them there before it begins to affect training, morale and rotation schedules? It’s very costly,” he added (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, Jan. 12). The U.S. military has also begun sending e-mails to Iraqi military and civilian leaders, calling on them to defect and to reveal any WMD sites, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The e-mails, sent in Arabic, call on Iraqis to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction, to identify the locations of such weapons or to render them inactive, according to the Herald. The messages warned that failure to cooperate would “lead to grave personal consequences.” Iraqi officials began receiving the e-mails this month, recent visitors to the country said. Iraqi authorities, however, have since blocked access to the state-controlled e-mail service, the Herald reported (Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 13). Inspections U.N. inspectors visited at least four suspect Iraqi sites today, according to the Associated Press. Inspectors from the IAEA and U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission visited Baghdad’s technological university and two science colleges, according to the Iraqi Information Ministry. An IAEA team also visited the Ibn Rushed company, which performs firefighting equipment maintenance and quality control for construction materials, the ministry said (Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Jan. 13). Yesterday, inspectors visited eight sites, according to an IAEA press release. A joint UNMOVIC and IAEA team visited Sharqat, which once housed an electromagnetic isotope separation facility. An UNMOVIC missile team visited the al-Rafah Liquid Engine Test Facility to observe a static test of an al-Samoud missile engine. A second missile team visited al-Mutaseem to observe a static test of the al-Uboor motor, according to the IAEA release. UNMOVIC missile inspectors also traveled to the southern city of Basra to tag al-Farah missiles at an Iraqi military unit north of the city. UNMOVIC biological inspectors visited Baghdad University’s College of Medicine’s Microbiology Department and the university’s College of Pharmacy, according to the agency release. An UNMOVIC biological team conducted a follow-up visit at the Iraqi Air Force’s Technical Military Depot at al-Taji. Inspectors based in the northern city of Mosul also visited the Jaber Ben Hayan State Establishment, which produces chemical protection equipment (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Jan. 12). For further information, see:
From January 13, 2003 issue.Iraq II: Summary of InspectionsExperts 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. More than 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ reported activities.
From January 10, 2003 issue.Iraq I: Blix Demands More Iraqi Information During Security Council BriefingWeapons inspections in Iraq have not turned up any hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction and “transparency is increasing,” U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council yesterday, according to his briefing notes (see GSN, Jan. 9). The prompt access and cooperation provided by Iraqi officials, however, “is no guarantee that prohibited stocks or activities could not exist at other sites, whether above ground, underground or in mobile units,” according to the notes. Blix also criticized the Iraqi declaration as “rich in volume but poor in new information about weapons issues and practically devoid of new evidence on such issues.” The burden is on Iraq to prove it has no weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi officials could provide a range of evidence, including “budgets, letters of credit, productions records, destruction records, transportation notes, or interviews by knowledgeable persons, who are not subjected to intimidation,” according to the notes. “If evidence is not presented, which gives a high degree of assurance, there is no way the inspectors can close a file by simply invoking a precept that Iraq cannot prove the negative. In such cases, regrettably, they must conclude, as they have done in the past, that the absence of the particular item is not assured,” the notes say. Blix’s notes also say that the “Air Force document” — submitted by Iraq to account for chemical weapons it says it used during the Iran-Iraq war — is insufficient and does not resolve the inspectors’ questions. There are also outstanding questions regarding possible stocks of the chemical agent VX. “We have found no additional information in the declaration that would help to resolve this [VX] issue. Instead, it contains information that is contradicted by documents previously found by UNSCOM. Iraq will have to further clarify the matter,” the notes say. Blix also said that Iraq’s list of personnel was insufficient. The list included 117 people associated with Iraq’s chemical programs, 120 for biological programs and 156 for missile programs. “This is an inadequate response,” the notes say. “We do not feel that the Iraqi side has made a serious effort to respond to the request we made,” Blix added. In its declaration, Iraq also declared the import of banned missile engines and material for missile fuel, some as late as 2002, according to Blix’s notes. Currently, there are 100 U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission inspectors, 58 support staff and 49 air crew in Iraq, the notes say. As of Wednesday, UNMOVIC had conducted 150 inspections of 127 sites. The inspectors have eight helicopters and plan to begin high-altitude surveillance soon, the notes say. A group of 19 inspectors are working out of a regional office that the United Nations has established in Mosul, according to the notes (CNN.com, Jan. 9). Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s top science official, Gen. Amir Saadi, criticized the report. Those who allege shortcomings in Iraq’s reports are either “not fully acquainted with our voluminous declaration or they lost their way” while reading it, Saadi said (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Jan. 10). The International Atomic Energy Agency has conducted 109 inspections at 88 sites in Iraq, according to notes from IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei who also briefed the Security Council yesterday (CNN.com II, Jan. 9). Elbaradei’s report questions U.S. President George W. Bush’s assertion to the U.N. General Assembly last September that Iraq was attempting to buy aluminum tubes for use in uranium enrichment centrifuges. “While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the IAEA’s analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets,” the report says. “While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it,” the report added (Michael Gordon, New York Times, Jan. 10). Iraqi Scientists Not “Ready” to Leave Meanwhile, in Baghdad, no Iraqi scientists are ready to leave the country for interviews with U.N. weapons inspectors, said Gen. Hussam Mohamed Amin, chief of Iraq’s monitoring directorate. “Nobody is ready to go outside to make an interview with UNMOVIC or the IAEA,” Amin said (Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Jan. 10). Officials Want Deadline Pushed Back Officials from Russia, Britain and Germany yesterday called for allowing the inspectors sufficient time to complete their work in work. The first significant inspections report due Jan. 27 should not be considered a final report, officials said (Nichols/Diamond, USA Today, Jan. 10). U.S. officials agreed that Jan. 27 would probably not be a firm deadline. “It’s wrong to assume anything has to happen in January or February. We’re not in this to call a quick war, so don’t assume any timetable,” said a senior U.S. State Department official. “We have to exhaust the U.N. process to get people to come through with military and other support,” the official added. The White House also said that inspectors must be given room to work. “The president has said that he wants the inspectors to be able to do their jobs, to continue their efforts, and that’s what we support,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday said that the inspectors were only “in the middle” of their work (Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 10). The Jan. 27 report “will be another in a series of reports, likely not the last,” said British U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock. “Jan. 27 won’t necessarily produce something new or dramatic. My advice is to calm down,” he added (Betsy Pisik, Washington Times, Jan. 10). French U.N. Ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, also opposed a firm time limit (Wright, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 10). Inspectors Visit Four Sites Today Inspectors visited four sites near Baghdad today, and went to seven sites in central Iraq yesterday, Reuters reported. A team of chemical inspectors visited the al-Mamoun Plant of the al-Rasheed State Company, run by the Military Industrialization Commission 25 miles southeast of Baghdad. The facility was suspected to be developing missiles that would be armed with chemical or biological weapons and the site was named in a British dossier released in September 2002, Reuters reported (see GSN, Sept. 24, 2002). A team also visited the State Company for Drugs and Medical Appliances in the Jadiriya suburb of Baghdad. Biological experts visited the Trade Ministry of Baghdad’s al-Dabbash and al-Adel stores (Reuters/MSNBC.com, Jan. 10).
From January 10, 2003 issue.Iraq II: Summary of InspectionsExperts 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. More than 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ reported activities.
From January 9, 2003 issue.Iraq I: Inspectors Find No “Smoking Guns,” Blix SaysU.N weapons inspectors operating within Iraq have so far found no “smoking guns” that would demonstrate that Baghdad is attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction, U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told reporters at the United Nations today (see GSN, Jan. 8). “We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven’t found any smoking guns,” Blix said before briefing the U.N. Security Council with International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei. While inspectors have found little evidence to support the U.S. and British claims that Iraq has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, the declaration was incomplete, Blix told the gathered reporters. “We think that the declaration failed to answer a great many questions,” Blix said (Associated Press/London Independent, Jan. 9). Today’s Security Council briefing was scheduled primarily for the benefit of the five new members who joined at the start of the year, according to Agence France-Presse. The new members have had little time to analyze the Iraqi declaration, which was submitted to the council last month. The next important date in the inspections timeline is Jan. 27, when Blix and ElBaradei are scheduled to provide the Security Council with a 60-day update on inspections. South Africa, on behalf of the U.N. nonaligned nations group, has asked council president France to arrange for the Jan. 27 briefing to be made public, AFP reported. The United States, however, is “completely against” the idea, a council diplomat said (Agence France-Presse/BusinessDay, Jan. 9). Although its declaration is considered incomplete, Iraq has not tried to impede the inspectors’ operations, leading some officials to speculate that U.N.-sanctioned military activites against Iraq are unlikely to approved soon. “Realistically, it is not going to be easy to see in the next two months that we will be able to say that Iraq is not cooperating,” a diplomat said (David Usborne, London Independent, Jan. 9). Intelligence-Sharing France has called on other countries to provide inspectors with any intelligence information they might have concerning Iraq’s WMD programs, according to the Associated Press. France wants the Security Council to implement a resolution calling on countries to provide inspectors with information on Iraq’s “prohibited programs” and to recommend sites to be visited and personnel to be interviewed, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said yesterday. “All countries with specific information must convey it,” de Villepin said Tuesday during a press conference in Moscow (Edith Lederer, Associated Press, Jan. 9). Over the past several days, the United States has begun providing inspectors with “significant” intelligence information that has allowed them to be “more aggressive and to be more comprehensive in the work they’re doing,” U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2002). While Powell did not detail what information was being provided, he said, “we want to flood this up” with information that would help inspectors carry out their mission. The United States is still holding back, however, on providing inspectors with some of its most sensitive intelligence and is waiting to see if inspectors “are able to handle it and exploit it,” Powell said. “It is not a matter of opening up every door that we have,” he added. The Bush administration has also provided the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the IAEA with an outline on how to conduct interviews with Iraqi WMD personnel outside the country, Powell said. “I don’t know that it’s all glued together yet, but I know that (the inspectors) know there are ways to do that,” he said. Blix has recently been receiving new intelligence information from the United States, although it “is a little opaque,” a U.N. source said. IAEA inspectors still need “more specific information to act on” from the United States, ElBaradei said Tuesday in an interview with ABC News. “We are in contact with the administration and I hope in the next few weeks we’ll be getting much more information for us to be able to zero in on any suspicious activities,” ElBaradei said (DeYoung/Pincus, Washington Post, Jan. 9). U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the United States might withhold some of its most sensitive intelligence information from the Security Council for fear of jeopardizing any potential military action. The final decision, however, is in the hands of U.S. President George W. Bush, Rumsfeld said. “To the extent that prior to using force he were to reveal intelligence information in a way that damaged the ability to conduct the conflict, it would be, needless to say, unfortunately risky for the coalition forces’ lives engaged,” Rumsfeld said. “And I don’t know what calibration would be made there. On the one hand, you have the advantage of persuading the publics in the world and countries of the facts of the matter, and on the other hand, by so doing, you weaken your ability to do that which you have decided to do,” he added (Roland Watson, London Times, Jan. 9). Inspections Meanwhile, inspectors have visited at least seven suspect Iraqi sites today, Iraqi officials said. UNMOVIC missile inspectors visited the al-Rifah facility in Baghdad, al-Hareth in Taji, about 10 miles north of Baghdad and al-Milad in Yousefiyah, about 10 miles south of the capital, according to Reuters. UNMOVIC chemical teams visited the al-Rayah facility in Taji and Ayniyah in Beji, about 110 miles north of Baghdad. UNMOVIC biological inspectors visited a Baghdad medical laboratory, Reuters reported. A team of IAEA inspectors visited the al-Qadisiyah facility northeast of the city (Nadim Ladki, Reuters/Yahoo.com, Jan. 9). Iraq Denies Exile Rumors A senior Iraqi diplomat has denied recent reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is considering going into exile before any potential war with the United States. Responding specifically to a report that Hussein was considering exile in Libya and that his son Uday had sent $3 billion to Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi to arrange asylum, Abbas Khalaf, Iraq’s ambassador to Russia, said rumors of exile are “nonsense” and a “canard” that is part of a psychological campaign against Iraq. “I’d like to assure you that Hussein will continue to defend his homeland. He is one of the leaders who will never leave his country and will fight till the last drop of blood,” Khalaf was quoted by Interfax yesterday. “Hussein enjoys excellent health. He is in a determined mood, is in perfect control of the situation and believes in our victory,” Khalaf added. One of the biggest hurdles to any consideration by Hussein of going into exile is a fear of being charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for his rule of Iraq, the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, according to the Los Angeles Times. For Hussein to step down, he would want a guarantee that he will not be extradited from his place of exile to stand trial, Arab officials said. While the U.S. State Department has been working to prepare war crimes charges against Hussein and other senior Iraqi officials, the issue is now being re-examined, according to U.S. officials (see GSN, Oct. 30, 2002). There has also been debate within the Bush administration as to what Hussein might attempt to do once in exile, according to the Times. “Some say he’s the ultimate survivor and will take whatever steps necessary to get out of this alive, believing he’ll be able to go back someday because the American experiment in Iraq will fail. He’s so convinced of his own abilities that he believes he’s the once and future strongman that Iraq needs,” a U.S. official said (Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9). For further information, see:
From January 9, 2003 issue.Iraq II: Summary of InspectionsExperts 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. More than 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ reported activities.
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