Iraq:  Baghdad Considering U.N. Order to Destroy Missile Program

A top Iraqi official said today that Baghdad wants to negotiate the U.N. order to destroy its al-Samoud 2 missiles, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 21).

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix delivered a letter Friday demanding that Iraq begin to destroy all its al-Samoud 2 missiles by March 1.  A panel of U.N. experts found that the missile’s range exceeds the 150-kilometer set by post-Gulf War U.N. resolutions.

“This is being studied very carefully and the channels are still open” between Iraq and the United Nations, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi said Monday.  “We will come up with a decision quite soon,” he added.

“There is an open dialogue between us and (the weapons inspectors) and we hope that it will be settled,” al-Saadi said.

The top Iraqi liaison to the weapons inspectors said last night that the missiles, in their final forms, will not exceed the 150-kilometer limit.

“The missile was and is still being researched and developed and hasn’t reached its final stage.  The weights are not final,” Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohamed Amin said.  “We have suggested to (the inspectors) that they randomly choose any missile they want and check its range.  We are sure its range will be less,” he added.

Amin said Iraq was waiting for a response from chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix after Baghdad sent him a letter asking that he reconsider his order to destroy the missiles.  A U.N. official in Baghdad, however, said that Blix had answered by ordering the missiles destroyed by the end of this week.

“This is not negotiable,” the official said.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he expects Baghdad to comply with the order.

“If they refused to destroy the weapons, the Security Council will have to make a decision,” Annan said.  “I don’t see why they would not destroy them,” he added (Niko Price, Associated Press/MSNBC.com, Feb. 24).

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Iraq:  Blix Plans to Ask Baghdad to Destroy Missiles

Top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix plans to officially ask Baghdad to destroy its stockpile of al-Samoud 2 missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Feb. 19).

Blix will send a letter this week notifying Iraq that the al-Samoud 2’s maximum range exceeds the 150-kilometer limit set by U.N. resolutions, the Journal reported.

If Baghdad complies, and destroys the missiles, the U.S. effort to build an international coalition to invade Iraq could suffer.  If Iraq refuses to destroy the missiles, however, the United States could use the al-Samoud 2 as evidence that Baghdad refuses to disarm, according to the Journal (David Cloud, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 20).

Blix has not yet decided how to address Iraq’s illicit rocket engine imports and its rebuilding of missile motor casting chambers that previous U.N. inspectors had destroyed.  Blix could send a letter shortly with his decision, the Associated Press reported.

Independent experts corroborated suspicions that the casting chambers could still produce missile motors with ranges “significantly greater” than 93 miles, according to Blix.

“Accordingly, these chambers remain proscribed,” he said (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Feb.20).

While waiting for a Blix decision and an Iraqi response, U.N. inspectors have continued tag al-Samoud 2 missiles in Iraq.  Inspectors attach 32 tags with bar codes to each section of the 23-foot missiles.

Iraq’s Ibn al-Haytham facility has delivered 50 al-Samoud 2 missiles to the Iraqi army and has another 50 on the assembly line, Mazhar Ahmad, the factory’s director, said Wednesday (Jacques Charmelot, Agence France-Presse, Feb. 20).

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