Iraq:  Bush Set to Declare End of Major Combat Operations

U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to announce tonight the end of major military action in Iraq, about six weeks after the announcement of the start of the war, according to the Chicago Tribune (see GSN, April 30).

For his address, Bush will be flown out to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California.  While most of Bush’s speech is expected to focus on the progress made in Iraq and in the overall war on terrorism, he is also expected to acknowledge that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have not yet been found, White House aides said.

“This is a significant moment in our history in which the president, in a unique way, will be able to thank the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way,” White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.

In his speech, Bush will not formally declare that the war in Iraq is over because such an announcement would require the release of Iraqi prisoners of war under international law, according to the Tribune.  Such an announcement would also complicate the search for former senior Iraqi officials because the search would then be seen as a continuation of hostilities, officials said.

“The president knows that while major combat operations have ended and while the next phase has begun with the reconstruction of Iraq, there continue to be threats to the security and the safety of the American people, and he will describe that,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said (Bob Kemper, Chicago Tribune, May 1).

Blair Confident in WMD Case

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday expressed confidence that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be found, saying that anyone who doubted otherwise would be left “eating their words.”

“I am absolutely convinced and confident about the case on weapons of mass destruction,” Blair said (Boston Globe, May 1).

Possible Hussein Letter

The London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds al Arabi yesterday published a letter said to be signed by Hussein, according to the New York Times.

The letter, dated April 28, Hussein’s 66th birthday, calls on Iraqis to rise up against the “infidel, criminal, murderous and cowardly occupier” and predicted that “the day of liberation and victory will come.”

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the newspaper, said the letter proved that Hussein was still alive and able to resist the United States.

“This confirms to me that he is definitely saying, ‘I'm still alive, I’m kicking, I’m not finished,’” Atwan said.

Atwan, who believes the letter is genuine, also noted a different tone in the letter than in previous statements by Hussein.

“He is not defiant, as he used to be, not arrogant — he is more modest, trying to be humble,” Atwan said.  “He's not saying:  ‘I am the God; you have to worship me.  I am different, but I am not finished,” Atwan added (Warren Hodge, New York Times, May 1).

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Iraq:  Captured Iraqi Officials Denying WMD Claims, U.S. Officials Say

U.S. officials have said that all captured senior Iraqi officials are denying during interrogations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, April 29).

Many of the officials are lying to distance themselves from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, an official said.

“They are all sticking to that story,” the official said.  “They’ve got every reason to lie, at least initially,” the official added (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 30).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that he believed U.S. forces would find evidence of that country’s WMD efforts.

“On the … question of weapons of mass destruction, they will be found,” Powell said during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Powell also expressed confidence in the reliability of U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s WMD efforts, revisiting his February U.N. Security Council briefing (see GSN, Feb. 5).

“The presentation I made before the United Nations on the 5th of February was at the end of four straight days of living with the entire intelligence community and going over every single thing we knew,” Powell said.  “What I presented on that day was information that was all source and that had other backup to it, and not just what they saw in the presentation.  Everything we had there had backup and double sourcing and triple sourcing,” he said (Federal News Service transcript, April 30).

Sanctions

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that sanctions against Iraq should not be lifted until it can be determined that the country no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, April 25).

The U.S.-led coalition justified its war against Iraq on the basis of that country’s possession of prohibited weapons, and that issue must be resolved before sanctions can be lifted, Putin said after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“Where is Saddam?  Where are these arsenals, if they were really there, and what is happening with them?  Maybe Saddam is sitting somewhere in a secret bunker and plans to blow all this stuff up soon, at the last second, threatening hundreds of human lives,” Putin said.  “We don’t know anything.  These questions must be answered,” he said (Steve Gutterman, Associated Press/Boston Globe, April 30).

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Iraq:  “Missile Man” Surrenders, “Dr. Germ” Still Free

A former Iraqi general, known to U.N. inspectors as the “Missile Man,” turned himself in to U.S. custody yesterday, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, April 28).

Amer Rashid, ranked 47th on the U.S. Defense Department list of the 55 most wanted Iraqis, was formerly in charge of Iraqi missile programs and recently served as the country’s oil minister.  He is married to Rihab Taha, an Iraqi microbiologist known as “Dr. Germ.”

The U.S. military is also looking for Taha, but her whereabouts remain unknown, according to AP.

Rashid was a member of the Military Industrialization Organization, which oversaw the production of Iraq’s most powerful weapons.  Lt. Gen. Hossam Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison with weapons inspectors, and Amir al-Saadi, Saddam Hussein’s top weapons adviser, were both in that organization and are now in U.S. custody.

Top U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in March that Rashid and Taha would be some of “the most interesting persons” to interrogate about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (Niko Price, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, April 29).

Meanwhile, captured former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz has told U.S. officials that Iraq destroyed WMD stockpiles as military forces arrived in the Middle East to prepare for invading Iraq.

U.S. officials said they do not know if Aziz is being truthful, or if he would even be in a position to know such information (CNN.com, April 29).

Another Suspicious Find

U.S. forces have seized a truck near Mosul and specialists are testing equipment from the truck for traces of biological agents, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the truck might be a mobile biological weapons laboratory, according to the Times (Miller/Drogin, Los Angeles Times, April 29).

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Iraq:  U.S. Plans to Add WMD Searchers; Leading Iraqi Official in Custody

Concerned by the lack of WMD evidence uncovered so far in Iraq, the Bush administration plans to triple the number of searchers, bringing the total to 1,500 personnel dedicated to finding banned weapons, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, April 25).

Currently, 500 military and scientific specialists are in Iraq, with 150 of them searching for weapons of mass destruction and the rest providing support.

“A fairly robust organization is going over there,” said a military official.  “It will also look for evidence of war crimes, terrorism connections, missing POWs — anything it can find that will help get to the weapons of mass destruction,” the official said (Steven Weisman, New York Times, April 27).

The additional personnel would allow the United States to broaden its search.

“We have about 1,000 sites that we knew about before this point,” said Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of all coalition forces in Iraq and the surrounding region.  “We’ll go through all of those.  The whole thrust of this is probably going to carry us through several thousand sites up in that country,” he said (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 28).

U.S. Searchers Frustrated by Limits

Some members of the U.S. WMD search teams say they are frustrated by a lack of resources and overly rigid search rules.  Originally four Mobile Exploitation Teams (METs) were assigned to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, but two of them have been reordered to investigate Iraqi war crimes and to collect documents of intelligence value, according to the Times.

MET members said they had not been told to expect more personnel and criticized the Sensitive Site Teams that are likely to receive the additional forces.  Those teams, intended to alert the METs to suspicious sites, have often provided inaccurate information because they are inadequately trained, according to weapons experts.

MET members also complained that they have been required to stick to the original Defense Department list of suspect sites and are not able to act upon tips from local Iraqi informants.

Furthermore, MET members said they lack air and ground transportation and communication equipment (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 28).

U.N. Inspectors Will Not Join WMD Hunt

While debate continues in the United Nations over whether U.N. inspectors should return to Iraq to help the WMD hunt, there is little interest in this prospect in the United States, according to the Times.  Even the State Department, which pushed for giving U.N. inspectors the opportunity to resume inspections last autumn, is not supporting their return now.

“Forget it,” said one official.  “On principle, we don’t want the United Nations running around Iraq,” the official added.

Ambiguous Evidence

Some U.S. officials are playing down the prospects of finding a “smoking gun” — usable weapons of mass destruction.  Instead, the most condemning evidence will probably be empty shells designed to carry chemical or biological weapons or laboratories that are capable of producing WMD precursor chemicals, according to administration officials and experts.

“People are realizing that Saddam Hussein may not have stored the weapons themselves, in part because when you put chemical or biological agents into weapons, they deteriorate very rapidly, said an administration official.  Therefore U.S. experts will probably need to make their case based on more ambiguous evidence that is subject to different interpretations.

“The evidence that we do find will be convincing to most experts, but not necessarily to those predisposed to doubt what we say,” said a U.S. official.

Said another official, “It may be that the Iraqis poured toxins into the ground, or scoured out their shells, or never filled their shells.  There may be weapons, and there may not be.”

“But it will be clear,” the official added, “that they were pursuing WMD actively” (Weisman, New York Times).

Senior Iraqi Official Captured

Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the Iraqi official responsible for liaising with U.N. inspectors before the recent war, was captured by undisclosed forces at Ramadi and turned over to U.S. forces Saturday.

Amin had been head of Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, which kept track of Iraq’s weapons and facilitated the movement of U.N. inspectors.  Amin was No. 49 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials (Reuters, April 27).

In recent months Amin had given frequent news conferences to deny that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and he reportedly repeated that denial yesterday (Kelly/Porubcansky, Los Angeles Times, April 28).

Another Suspicious Find Discounted

A dozen 55-gallon drums found Friday in Iraq initially tested positive for the nerve agent cyclosarin and possibly for mustard gas, but more precise follow-up testing indicated no chemical weapons agents, according to reports.

The drums were found by U.S. special forces at Baiji, 115 miles north of Baghdad.  Initial tests conducted by units of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division used Army M-8 test paper, which is designed to provide more false positive results than false negative ones, said division chemical officer Lt. Col. Valentine Novikov.

A subsequent test with an AP-2C detector, considered more accurate, also “came up positive for a nerve agent,” Novikov said (Guy Taylor, Washington Times, April 28).

However, further testing by Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo contradicted the earlier results.

“Our tests showed no positive hits at all,” said team leader Capt. Ryan Cutchin (Miller, New York Times).

Former Iraqi Scientist Lied

Nissar Hindawi, a senior Iraqi biological weapons scientist in the 1980s, told the New York Times that he and other scientists were compelled to lie to U.N. inspectors following the 1991 Gulf War.

Responsible for briefing U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s, Hindawi said his reports “were all lies.”

Hindawi worked on Iraqi programs to produce anthrax and botulinum toxin until 1989 when he was dismissed after he complained to then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the program was riddled with corruption.  During his tenure Iraq “produced huge quantities” of both toxins, he said.

Later, “there were orders to destroy it,” Hindawi said.  “They destroyed some — whether all or not, I can’t say,” he added.

He said Iraq never made dried anthrax, a form much more useful for weapons purposes, because he chose not to.  He thought he had figured out how to do it, but “I kept the method secret,” adding, “History would have cursed me.”

Following the Gulf War, Hindawi was intermittently under suspicion or jailed by Iraqi authorities for seeking to contact Western officials and he is now under the protective custody of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabai (Judith Miller, New York Times, April 27).

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Iraq:  United States to Introduce U.N. Resolution to End Sanctions

The United States plans to introduce next week a U.N. Security Council resolution to lift sanctions against Iraq, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, April 24).

The decision to introduce the resolution, made during a meeting of top Bush administration national security advisers earlier this week, adopted for the most part a Defense Department proposal to eliminate all U.N. control over Iraq, rather than a step-by-step approach advocated by the State Department, according to the Post.

Many Security Council members have said, however, that the U.N. resolutions that established the sanctions regime in the early 1990s call for verifying Iraq’s disarmament of weapons of mass destruction prior to sanctions being lifted.  The Bush administration opposes the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq, saying they would only interfere with the U.S. WMD search efforts (DeYoung/Lynch, Washington Post, April 25).

The Security Council yesterday temporarily extended limited U.N. control over the Iraqi oil-for-food program until June 3.  The extension leaves the council with more than a month to determine the future of the sanctions regime, the Financial Times reported (Mark Turner, Financial Times, April 24).

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov yesterday called for a partial lifting of the sanctions against Iraq.

Russia supports a temporary lifting of sanctions “on goods that may be used for humanitarian problems in Iraq,” Ivanov said.  “An overwhelming majority of countries share this approach, therefore it is necessary now to make appropriate decisions,” he said.

Russia has also maintained a position that only the Security Council can fully lift the sanctions.  Prior to doing so, however, Russia wants U.N. inspectors to verify Iraq’s disarmament.

“As for the full lifting of the sanctions, this issue must be resolved on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolutions that were adopted earlier,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said (CNN.com, April 24).

WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, yesterday’s surrender of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz to U.S. forces could be invaluable to U.S. efforts to find evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, according to U.S. officials and Iraqi specialists.

Aziz could also help U.S. forces to learn the fate of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other members of his regime, they said.

“It’s almost as good as getting Saddam,” said Judith Yaphe, a senior research professor at the National Defense University.  “He’s the first real insider we’ve got.  This takes us someplace,” she said.

Even though Aziz might not know the precise whereabouts of banned weapons, “he may know a lot about de facto WMD programs,” a U.S. official said.  After the 1991 Gulf War, Aziz was involved in a committee formed to deceive U.N. inspectors and to find ways to covertly continue to develop weapons of mass destruction, according to Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and National Security Council official (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, April 25).

A number of U.S. military expert teams are preparing to travel to Iraq next week to assist efforts to disable and destroy any weapons of mass destruction that might be discovered, defense officials said.

The teams will have up to 100 members, with various teams focusing on different types of banned weapons, according to the New York Times.  Currently the teams consist of one nuclear team, one missile team and four chemical and biological teams.  The teams will also destroy any dual-use facilities, technologies and materials that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction, officials said.

One of the teams’ first tasks will be to establish a central base where discovered weapons could be stored for later destruction, the Times reported.  Such a base will probably be set up at the Muthanna State Enterprise, a former suspected Iraqi chemical weapons plant 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, officials said.

Although some experts doubt the United States will find any WMD evidence in Iraq, defense officials said they had to be prepared for the possibility that such weapons and materials are found.

“One of the challenges we have in planning is we don’t know the scope of the mission,” said Stephen Younger, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which leads the effort.  “If nothing is found, we’ll have nothing to eliminate.  But I’m reasonably confident that things will be found,” he said (William Broad, New York Times, April 25).

Almost three weeks after capturing the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center — the main facility in Iraq’s former nuclear program — the Bush administration still has not conducted an extensive inventory of the radiological materials housed at the site to make sure none have been stolen, according to U.S. military officials (see GSN, April 14).

Before the war, the Tuwaitha site contained almost 3,900 pounds of partially enriched uranium, more than 94 tons of natural uranium and small quantities of cesium, cobalt and strontium, according to reports compiled during the 1990s by the International Atomic Energy Agency.  The United States does not know if these materials remain secure, however, because it has not sent investigators to examine the site, defense officials said.  It is known, though, that the Tuwaitha complex was unguarded for days and that some looters were able to get inside, according to Pentagon and U.S. Central Command officials.

Interagency disputes are partially responsible for the delay in investigating the Tuwaitha complex, officials said.  Civilian Pentagon policy officials had originally proposed to conduct a complete inspection without the involvement of the IAEA, which would have required U.S. experts to break the agency’s seals placed on safeguarded nuclear materials, according to the Washington Post.  Other Pentagon and U.S. State Department offices responsible for treaty compliance, international organization and nonproliferation, however, objected to that proposal.

U.S. forces at the site have not broken any IAEA seals, said Lt. Col. Michael Slifka, a senior leader at the Central Command’s Sensitive Site Exploitation Planning Team.  He also said he did not know if others had broken the seals, however, because he has not been authorized to send an expert team to the site.

“For force protection reasons, because of the folks we’ve got there, we aren’t in a position to go inside,” Slifka said (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, April 25).

Bush Confident WMD Will Be Found

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that Iraqi officials and scientists have provided information that Hussein might have destroyed or hidden biological and chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the war. 

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some,” Bush said in an interview with NBC News.

Even so, Bush said he was confident U.S. troops would find evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts.  While the United States has only examined about 90 out of hundreds of suspect sites, those sites that have been examined have been designated as the most likely to conceal weapons, Bush said.

“And so we will find them,” Bush said.  “But it’s going to take time to find them.  And the best way to find them is to continue to collect information from the humans, Iraqis who were involved in hiding them,” he said.

Bush acknowledged, however, that U.S. credibility would be questioned until proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was discovered.

“I think there’s going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program,” Bush said (Stevenson/Sanger, New York Times, April 25).

Even if no such Iraqi weapons were found, it would not mean the war against Iraq was not justified, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today.

“People are now trying to suggest that somehow the decision to take military action was entirely conditional on subsequently finding chemical and biological weapons material,” Straw said.  “That wasn’t the case,” he said.

The international community “accepted that Saddam had these weapons and they posed a threat,” Straw said.    “Did we overstate the threat?  I don’t think we overstated the threat,” he added (Associated Press/MSNBC.com, April 25).

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NATO Response:  WMD Response Team to Be Ready by Year’s End

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is on schedule to deploy its new WMD response team by the end of this year, according to E.C. Whiteside, head of NATO’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Center’s Political Affairs Division (see GSN, Nov. 21, 2002).

A prototype response team is already in place and has been conducting exercises throughout Europe and North America, according to documents provided by Whiteside.  The team is scheduled to become active after Exercise Allied Action, hosted by Turkey in November.

The response team, which would be NATO’s first, is part of a larger effort by the alliance to confront new threats and develop an overall capability to respond to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Whiteside said.

That effort includes developing a disease surveillance system to alert NATO commanders of unusual infectious epidemics, a deployable analytical laboratory to investigate potentially contaminated sites, a stockpile of medicines, and defense material and improved training.

Whiteside described the effort at an international security conference hosted by the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, NATO officials assessed what the organization could offer to the war on terrorism, he said.  Until this effort, the organization has relied on WMD teams from member countries to address WMD defense needs, Whiteside added.

NATO’s Senior Defense Group on Proliferation developed the initiatives and alliance defense ministers endorsed the effort last June.

“They were designed to serve as a first step in addressing the most critical deficiencies in NATO’s NBC defenses.  These initiatives will be developed … and will emphasize multinational participation and the rapid fielding of enhanced capabilities,” according to a NATO release.

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U.S. Response:  Pentagon Restructures Management for WMD Defense Program

U.S. officials have approved a plan for a new management structure for the U.S. Chemical and Biological Defense Program, the Defense Department said yesterday.

Various items such as protective equipment, chemical and biological agent detectors, decontamination equipment and medical countermeasures are acquired through the program, which would see the streamlining of a number of management positions and the strengthening of accountability for different program elements under the new plan, according to a Pentagon release.  The naming of a new joint program executive officer is also planned.

Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, and Anna Johnson-Winegar, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical and biological defense, will oversee the program.  The science and technology areas of the program and its financial management will be handled by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Department said (Defense Department release, April 24).

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