Syrian WMD Goals, Support for Terrorism Pose “Security Concern,” Bolton Says

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton today warned that Syria remains a “security concern” for the United States because of a combination of WMD ambitions and support for international terrorism.  He also said, however, that there are no signs that Damascus has provided terrorists with weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Appearing before a House International Relations subcommittee, Bolton outlined U.S. intelligence regarding Syria’s nuclear research efforts, as well as its biological and chemical weapons programs.  The United States remains “concerned” about Syria’s nuclear research program and its efforts to obtain dual-use nuclear-related technologies, Bolton said.  He also noted that Syria and Russia have agreed to increase civilian nuclear cooperation, which “could provide opportunities for Syria to expand its indigenous capabilities, should it decide to pursue nuclear weapons.”

In his remarks, Bolton compared Syria’s nuclear efforts with those of Iran by the fact that both countries have not yet signed Additional Protocols to their International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreements.  Bolton said the protocols were necessary because the safeguard agreements, on their own, were not enough to detect “a determined effort to circumvent the agreement and produce nuclear weapons.”

“Syria’s unwillingness to adopt and implement the Additional Protocol is extremely troubling, as in the case of Iran, which is also refusing so far to sign and implement that protocol,” Bolton said.

Bolton also told the Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee of Syria’s biological, chemical and missile programs, as well as Damascus’ reliance on international aid for such efforts. 

Describing Syria’s chemical weapons programs as “one of the most advanced Arab state chemical weapons capabilities,” Bolton said Damascus had developed stockpiles of sarin and was attempting to develop stronger nerve agents such as VX.  While Syria’s chemical weapons program is fairly self-sufficient, it still relies on foreign assistance for “key elements” such as precursor chemicals and production equipment, Bolton said.

The United States believes that Syria is continuing its efforts to develop an offensive biological weapons capability, Bolton said.  He also said that Syria’s ballistic missile capability relied “heavily” on Iranian and North Korean aid.

In addition to its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, Syria still remains an active supporter of terrorism with connections to Islamic militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, Bolton said.  He added, however, that there is no information that Syria has transferred weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups or that Damascus would allow them to obtain such weapons.

Bolton also told the House panel that the United States has been unable to confirm reports that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime covertly transferred Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to Syria in an attempt to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors and coalition forces.

“We are continuing with the full breadth of resources at our command to seek conclusive evidence that any such transfer has taken place,” Bolton said.

In a seeming nod to the controversy surrounding U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Bolton said there was “very broad and deep agreement” within the Bush administration over the assessments he presented on Syria’s WMD efforts.

“I can assure you that with respect both to the unclassified testimony which I have delivered and the prepared classified statement which - which has been delivered to the committee, that the judgments that are expressed there have been reviewed and commented on by everybody with a stake in the issue within the executive branch,” Bolton said.

Knight Ridder News Service reported in July that an earlier scheduled subcommittee appearance by Bolton was delayed because of objections from U.S. intelligence agencies over his assessment of Syria’s WMD capabilities (see GSN, July 16).

Subcommittee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) closed today’s hearing with support for the White House’s Syria assessment.  “Nothing ‘sexed-up’ here,” she said, referring to the controversy surrounding a 2002 British dossier on Iraq’s WMD threat.

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British Intelligence Chief Defends Iraqi WMD Dossier

Testifying before a parliamentary inquiry yesterday, British Secret Intelligence Service Director Richard Dearlove defended a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the New York Times (see GSN, Sept. 15).

Dearlove said that he and the intelligence service had had “full visibility of the process of preparing the dossier and that the whole process had gone extremely well.”

Dearlove also specifically defended a claim made in the dossier that the Iraqi military could deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes, calling it “a piece of well-sourced intelligence” (Warren Hoge, New York Times, Sept. 16).

“It did come from an established and reliable source equating a senior Iraqi military officer who was certainly in a position to know this information,” Dearlove said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Sept. 16).

Dearlove told the inquiry that he believed there had been a “misinterpretation” in the way the 45-minute claim had been presented, according to the New York Times.  Previous intelligence indicated that the claim referred to only short-range weapons, he said (Hoge, New York Times).

“The original report referred … to battlefield weapons,” Dearlove said.  ‘I think what subsequently happened in the reporting was that it was taken that the 45 minutes applied … to weapons of a longer range,” he said (Reuters/Washington Post, Sept. 16).

Powell Visits Site of 1988 Iraqi Chemical Weapons Attack

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday visited the northern Iraqi city of Halabja — the site of a 1998 chemical weapons attack by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime that killed 5,000 people.

“What can I say to you?”  Powell told an assembled crowd.  “I cannot tell you that choking mothers died holding their choking babies to their chests.  You know that,” he said.

“I cannot tell you that the world should have acted sooner.  You know that.  What I can tell you is that what happened here in 1988 is never going to happen again,” Powell said (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Sept. 16).

Powell also said the 1988 attack demonstrated that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and the will to use such weapons.

“If you want evidence of the existence and the use of weapons of mass destruction, come here now to Halabja today and see it,” Powell said.  “What happened over the intervening 15 years?  Did (Hussein) suddenly lose the motivation?  Did he suddenly decide that such weapons would not be useful?  The international community did not believe so,” he added.

Barham Salih, prime minister for the western section of Iraq’s Kurdish region, said the Halabja attack justified the U.S. effort to overthrow Hussein.

“Today it is perplexing and rather painful indeed for the people of Halabja to hear voices in the international community that continue to insist on proof for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction,” Salih said.  “Here is the proof.  Halabja is the proof. … This mass grave in Halabja and the other 170 so far discovered mass graves in Iraq should dispel any doubts about the legitimacy of the American and British liberation of Iraq.  These mass graves vindicate the moral imperative of your intervention to protect the people of Iraq,” Salih said (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Sept. 16).

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Cheney Defends Iraqi WMD Allegations

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday strongly defended White House charges that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained programs to develop weapons of mass destruction prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“The whole notion that somehow there’s nothing to the notion that Saddam Hussein had WMD or had developed WMD, it just strikes me as fallacious.  It’s not valid,” Cheney said on NBC’s Meet the Press.  “Now, nobody drove into Baghdad and had somebody say, ‘Hey, there’s the building over there where all of our WMDs stored’ — but that’s not the way the system worked,” he said.

Acknowledging that he misspoke during an earlier Meet the Press appearance when he had said that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons, Cheney yesterday offered a strong defense of the disputed White House claims that Iraq had maintained a nuclear weapons program.  As proof, Cheney cited Iraq’s cadre of trained scientists, evidence that Iraq possessed usable nuclear weapons designs, and a stockpile of 500 tons of uranium stored at the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program.

In addition, Cheney also referred to former Iraqi scientist Mahdi Shurkur Obeidi, who has provided the United States with components and designs for a centrifuge used to enrich uranium.  “That’s physical evidence that we have got in hand today,” Cheney said.

“To suggest that there is no evidence there that he [Hussein] had aspirations to acquire a nuclear weapon, I don’t think is valid,” Cheney said.

The U.S. allegations that Iraq had maintained an active nuclear weapons program, as well as some of the Bush administration’s pieces of evidence of such a program, have been heavily disputed, however, according to reports.  Last week, the Associated Press reported that International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had said in a confidential report that Iraq’s nuclear weapons program would not have been able to support active development of such weapons (see GSN, Sept. 9).

“In the areas of uranium acquisition, concentration and centrifuge enrichment, extensive field investigation and document analysis revealed no evidence that Iraq had resumed such activities,” AP quoted the report as saying.  “No indication of post-1991 weaponization activities was uncovered in Iraq,” it said.

Today, the Financial Times reported that many former Iraqi nuclear scientists have also continued to deny that their country possessed a nuclear weapons program prior to the war.

“It was surprising to hear these things from the Americans that we could build a nuclear bomb in six months, while meanwhile we were sitting here scrounging for a screwdriver,” the Times quoted a scientist who formerly headed a department in Bomb Design Group Four as saying.

In addition, AP reported in July that Obeidi — the same Iraqi scientist cited yesterday by Cheney — had also told the CIA that Iraq had not resurrected its nuclear weapons program since 1991 (see GSN, July 18).

Cheney also defended yesterday a heavily disputed claim made prior to the war by several senior White House officials, including President George W. Bush himself, that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa.  Cheney said a recent British inquiry had “revalidated” the claim.

In July, the White House acknowledged that the claim should not have been included into Bush’s State of the Union address because evidence used to support it — documents that purported to show an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger — had been determined by the IAEA to have been fraudulent (see GSN, July 30).  Last week, however, a British parliamentary committee investigating whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office had exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq said that British intelligence services were justified in continuing to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Biological, Chemical Weapons

In his remarks yesterday, Cheney also reiterated allegations that Iraq had maintained biological and chemical weapons programs prior to the war.  Two mobile trailers recovered by U.S. forces in Iraq could have been used to “produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack,” Cheney said.

The New York Times reported last month, however, that engineering experts from the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Intelligence Agency believed that the trailers had been intended to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, as Iraqi scientists had previously claimed (see GSN, Aug. 11). 

With regard to chemical weapons, Cheney said he suspected that the Hussein regime had hidden such weapons within Iraq’s civilian infrastructure.  “That’s not an unusual place to put it,” he said.

Cheney also reiterated the White House position that Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda were connected, saying that Baghdad had provided al-Qaeda operatives with training in biological and chemical weapons.

Cheney said that he was sure that Iraq had WMD capabilities prior to the war.

“There is no doubt in my mind … [that] Saddam Hussein had these capabilities,” Cheney said.  “This wasn’t an idea cooked up overnight by a handful of people either in the administration or the CIA,” he said.

Cheney Denies Pressuring U.S. Analysts

Cheney yesterday also denied reports that he had pressured CIA analysts to create analyses that supported White House positions.  In June, the Washington Post quoted a senior CIA official as saying that the trips made by Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to the agency’s headquarters “sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here” (see GSN, June 5).

Cheney acknowledged that he had asked “a hell of a lot of questions” of CIA analysts examining Iraqi WMD efforts, adding, “That’s my job.”  He denied, however, that his questions were an attempt to pressure analysts into creating certain assessments.

“I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did,” Cheney said.  “That’s crazy.  That makes no sense.  It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever,” he added.

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North Korea Criticizes International WMD Cargo Interdiction Exercise

North Korea yesterday criticized a naval interdiction training exercise held over the weekend off the Australian coast to practice a U.S.-led effort to block shipments of WMD-related cargo (see GSN, Sept. 12).

“Such moves of the United States are blatant military provocations to North Korea and they may push U.S. relations to an explosive phase,” the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

Four of the 11 countries involved in the Proliferation Security Initiative — Australia, France, Japan and the United States — took part in the “Pacific Protector” exercise.  The exercise scenario involved the purusuit and capture of a U.S. ship acting as a freighter loaded with chemical weapons (Richard Spencer, London Telegraph, Sept. 15).

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British Intelligence Chiefs Warned That Iraq War Could Increase Terrorist WMD Threat

Shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom, British intelligence chiefs had prepared a secret assessment warning that terrorist groups would be more likely to acquire weapons of mass destruction if then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime were overthrown, according to a British parliamentary report released yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 11).

In a Feb. 10 assessment, the British Joint Intelligence Committee said there was no intelligence that Iraq had provided weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda. 

“Any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists,” the assessment said (Adams/Alden, Financial Times, Sept. 11).

British Prime Minister Tony Blair had told the Joint Intelligence Committee that “there was obviously a danger that in attacking Iraq you ended up provoking the very thing you were trying to avoid,” according to yesterday’s report.  He also told the committee, however, that he believed the risk of Iraq providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorists would have increased if Hussein had been allowed to remain in power.

“This is my judgment and it remains my judgment,” Blair was quoted as saying by yesterday’s report, “and I suppose time will tell whether it’s true or it’s not true.”

Yesterday’s report was issued by the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, which has been conducting an inquiry into whether Blair’s office had exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq used in a September 2002 dossier, according to the Washington Post.  While the committee determined that the dossier had not been inflated, it did criticize the inclusion of a claim that the Iraqi military could have launched WMD attacks within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, the Post reported.

The 45-minute claim, “an arresting detail” that had been mentioned four times in the dossier, had referred only to “battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack,” the report said.  This “should have been highlighted in the dossier,” it said.

The report also said, however, that British intelligence services were justified in continuing to support the disputed claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger — a claim the United States has determined to be false, according to the Post (see GSN, Aug. 11).  “We have questioned the Secret Intelligence Service about the basis of its judgment and conclude that it is reasonable,” the report said (Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, Sept. 12).

In addition, the committee also criticized in its report British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, saying it was “disturbed” that Hoon did not reveal during testimony that ministry staff had expressed concerns about the dossier, according to CNN.com.

Committee Chairwoman Ann Taylor said that while Hoon did not lie, he had been “potentially misleading” in his testimony.

“He did not tell us lies,” Taylor said.  “It was potentially misleading, events overtook it. ... We got the information in the end.  It is speculative (to ask) what might have happened,” she said.

The Defense Ministry “could have been more helpful,” Hoon said.  “I regret any misunderstanding,” he said (CNN.com, Sept. 11).

Bush Administration Officials Shift in Justification for War

Meanwhile, since the end of major combat operations in Iraq, senior White House officials, including President George W. Bush himself, have moved away from citing Iraqi WMD programs as a major justification for war, according to the Washington Post.

In a speech Sunday, Bush barely mentioned Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  Instead, he linked Iraq to the war on terrorism, calling it the site of the last stand by the “enemies of freedom.”

Another senior administration official who has apparently altered is arguments is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who leading up to war stressed the issue of Iraqi WMD efforts, according to the Post.  More recently, however, Wolfowitz has instead chosen to focus on the evils of Hussein’s regime and the new opportunity to turn Iraq into an example for the rest of the Middle East.

In an interview with the Post last week, Wolfowitz denied that the White House has altered its justification for going to war with Iraq.  He said that he and other administration officials “had been clear from the beginning” that, in addition to weapons of mass destruction, war with Iraq would provide a chance to liberate the country and to create a model of democracy for the region.

“I was often criticized for talking too much about what Iraq could become when it was liberated, and I believed it has to become,” Wolfowitz said.  “We have to win (this war), and when we win it, I believe it will advance American interests,” he said.

Some critics in Congress of the war, however, have indicated that the White House shift in focus away from weapons of mass destruction is meant to hide the fact that evidence of such weapons has yet to be found, the Post reported.

“I don’t think (Wolfowitz and other administration officials) are being forthright,” said Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), the sole Republican senator to vote against the war.  “They are using whatever argument is most marketable at any given time,” he said (Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, Sept. 12).

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Bush Administration Considering Imposing Sanctions Against Syria

Bush administration officials have said that the White House is considering imposing sanctions against Syria for providing weapons to Iraq, Newsday reported today (see GSN, Aug. 12).

All relevant U.S. agencies, except the State Department, support sanctions against Syria, Bush administration officials said, adding that Secretary of State Colin Powell is unlikely to block the measure.  In the past several years, people close to Syrian President Bashar Asad, and possibly members of his family, have shipped weapons to Iraq that may have included WMD components, the officials said. 

The House International Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing next week on the Syria Accountability Act, which would make it easier for the president to impose sanctions on Syria, including a total ban on trade. 

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who was ordered to refrain from making strong WMD allegations against Syria in July, is scheduled to testify (see GSN, July 16).

The White House is also considering imposing separate sanctions under the USA PATRIOT Act, according to Newsday (Timothy Phelps, Newsday, Sept. 12).

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Officials Plan International WMD Cargo Interdiction Exercise for Tomorrow

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A group of 11 nations, including the United States, is scheduled to conduct tomorrow the first in a series of interdiction training exercises held as part of a U.S.-led effort to block shipments of WMD-related cargo (see GSN, Sept. 5).

As part of the Proliferation Security Initiative, Australia, France, Japan and the United States are scheduled to hold a two-day naval interdiction exercise this weekend in the Coral Sea off the northeastern coast of Australia, a senior U.S. State Department official said Tuesday.  The “Pacific Protector” exercise will also include liaison officers from the other seven countries that are involved in the initiative — Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, the State Department official said.

A series of 10 interdiction exercises have been scheduled to occur through early next year, the official said, adding that the exercises will involve air, land and sea interdiction and will occur at various international locations.  All 11 initiative members are expected to take part in the next two planned exercises, the official said.

“All of this is intended to sharpen the operational skills of the countries involved to facilitate interdictions when the possibility for an interdiction arises,” the official said.

Representatives from initiative members are also scheduled to meet in London Oct. 9-10 to discuss several issues, including levels of support and participation and reaction to a statement of interdiction principles agreed upon during a meeting held in Paris last week, the official said.  The official added, however, that the initiative should be seen more as a counterprolfieration measure and less as an organization.

“We’ll be successful to the extent that it is operational in conducting interdictions, not to the extent that … it meets and issues communiques,” the official said.

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Parliamentary Committee Clears Blair of Deliberately Exaggerating Intelligence on Iraqi Weapons

The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee today ruled that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office did not deliberately exaggerate intelligence that was contained in a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Sept. 5).

The committee did criticize, however, the inclusion of a claim in the report that the Iraqi military could have deployed biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes of being ordered to do so, AP reported.  The committee also said that British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon and his ministry had been “unhelpful and potentially misleading” by failing at first to reveal that some ministry analysts had expressed concerns about the dossier (Ed Johnson, Associated Press/Washington Post, Sept. 11).

The committee’s inquiry was conducted separately from another parliamentary inquiry into the apparent suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, who was the source for a BBC report that alleged that Blair’s office had “sexed up” prewar intelligence on Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse.

Some British newspapers have begun to speculate that Hoon may be forced to resign, AFP reported.

“Iraq inquiry leaves Hoon at the precipice,” said a headline in the London Independent (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 11).

U.S. Report to Answer Iraq WMD Questions, Rice Says

Meanwhile, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Monday that lingering questions surrounding Iraq’s former WMD capabilities would be answered in a report later this month by David Kay, a CIA representative in Iraq coordinating the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Kay, a senior official of the Iraq Survey Group, “is doing a thorough job now of putting together documentary evidence,” Rice said.  Kay’s work includes interviews with Iraqis and physical evidence to illustrate “a full picture of what has happened” to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD stockpiles and “the state of his (WMD) programs,” she said (U.S. Defense Department release, Sept. 10).

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