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The effects of sanctions on the Muslims of Iraq
Lowry unrealistic about depleted uranium
MP in 'shouting match' over Gulf illness
INTERVIEW - UN wants to verify if Iran atomic plans peaceful
Blix warns Baghdad ahead of visit
Weapons Inspector Warns Iraq to Disarm or Face Grave Problems
Nuke Agency: Iraq Must Boost Cooperation
The Smoking Gun
Slovenia Says Iraq Wanted Nuke Equipment
Doubts Remain About Purpose Of Specialized Aluminum Tubes
Powell Lays Out Case Against Iraq
Work on New Drones, Missiles Called Example of 'Persistence'
Despite Defectors' Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal
Data on Efforts to Hide Arms Called 'Strong Suit' of Speech
Powell offers 'irrefutable' arms proof
Classified data make case
In Their Words: The Security Council
Iraq Denounces U.S. 'Stunts'
U.S. has 'robust plans' if N.Korea attacks
Reactor Restarted, North Korea Says
US Says N.Korea Atomic Reactor Restart 'Dangerous'
U.S. Says It's Ready After N.Korea Warns of Attack
Bill gives airliners a missile defense
U.S.-Russia Atomic Arms Pact Wins Senate Panel's Backing
Moscow Treaty May Not Reduce Weapons
Nuclear weapons on the table in a Iraqi war
Indian Point Safety
Washington state nuclear alert deemed false alarm
Powell Sees Mideast Reshaped After Iraq War
At Council, Political Theater
MILITARY
Kuwait Mission Studies Chemical Threat
Speech Fails to Budge Europeans From Their Divergent Positions
Toting the Casualties of War
The Saddam Hussein Interview - Iraq
Iraqi military deploying near Kuwait border
Kurds Puzzled by Report of Terror Camp
Protecting Iraqi oil
Two Palestinian Nurses Killed as Helicopter Gunships Attack Hospital
Arab Envoys Look to Final Options for Averting War
NATO fails to agree on Iraq response
NATO May Protect Turkey in Case of War
Pakistani Chief Wants U.S. Out of Region
Reagan's space vision
Evidence a Rare Look at U.S. Intelligence
Mysterious 'Spy' Intrigues Japan
FBI: Accused Spies Had Classified Data
Turkey OKs upgrade of U.S. bases
Pentagon writing rules for use of non-lethal agents in Iraq war
STANDOFF WITH IRAQ
Army Readies Copters For Gulf
U.S. troop level reaches 113,000 in Persian Gulf area
E-Bombing Civilization
Funds in doubt for Pentagon's cyber-spy plan
101st Airborne Gets Deployment Orders
U.S. Forces in Persian Gulf Growing
They Call This Evidence
Net user group may aid terrorists
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
World Court Orders U.S. to Stay Executions Of 3 Mexicans
Scientists Face Security Dilemma
Risk of Terror Attack Climbs, U.S. Finds
U.S. to Accept Somali Bantu Refugees
Confidential Advisory Warns of Rise in Possible Terror Threats
Officials Worry About Agri - Terrorism
ENERGY AND OTHER
Bush, Environmentalists at Odds on Fuel Cell Plan
Lead Levels Linked to Male Infertility
Eighth Alternative to Lead Shot Approved
ACTIVISTS
N.Y. Antiwar March Blocked
The disquieted American
Anti-War Coalition Ready For A Fight
Corporations, War, You
INVOLVING CIVIL SOCIETY IN ADVANCING DISARMAMENT
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
The effects of sanctions on the Muslims of Iraq
Habib-ur-Rahman Khilafah.com Journal
06 February 2003
http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=6207&TagID=1#
Since 1991 a combination of sanctions, deteriorating health care provisions, contaminated water amongst others have caused a catastrophe in Iraq. These general sanctions have been equally as devastating as the continued military campaign waged against Iraq. Before the bombing in January 1991 started, many touted sanctions as an alternative to war. However after 12 years we see that sanctions actually augmented and prolonged the suffering and damage caused by the bombardment. Sanctions have shown to be an adjunct and not an alternative to war.
The following is a variety of sources that each highlight the intentionally devastating effects of the 12 years of US/UK led sanctions upon the Muslims of Iraq.
Destroying a whole society
The UN sanctions, have added to the death toll since 1991 and are estimated to be close to 1 million deaths with mass starvations and disease. Whilst Saddam Hussein has remained unaffected.
Denis Halliday a top UN official who resigned in protest over Iraq's sanctions wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that ... Five thousand children are dying every month ... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."
In the same interview (with John Pilger, Squeezed to Death, Guardian, March 2000 4) Halliday said, "I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price for economic sanctions; on the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of treated water. What is clear is that the Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. History will slaughter those responsible."
UNICEF published an independent report on the impact of sanctions and UNICEF's perspective, in1998 . It included the following table that details the multitude of impacts that sanctions have had:
Direct effects (immediate)
1. Decreased Imports - Medicines; Food Imports; Agricultural Inputs - fertilizer, pesticides, spare parts; Industrial/Commercial inputs/parts; Other spare parts; Fuel; Educational materials Water Purification/supply inputs.
2. Decreased Exports - Impact on export earnings, access to foreign currency, etc.
3. Decrease in Communications - Including telecommunications, media
4. Impact on Diplomatic Efforts
Short term effects (intermediate)
1. Health - Deterioration in health status; Increased: Morbidity and mortality (esp. child), Maternal and perinatal [sic] mortality, Low-birth-weight babies, Infectious diseases, Epidemics, Malnutrition; Deterioration in water quantity and quality; Deterioration in health services; Decrease in available medicines, vaccines laboratory and diagnostic tests; Breakdown of medical, Xray, lab equipments.
2. Food Security - Higher market prices for basic foodstuffs; Entitlement" problems in obtaining food; Shortages of basic food items; Decrease in household diet and caloric intake; Decreased agricultural and production; Decrease in livestock production; Black market purchases
3. Economics - Decreased export earnings; Decreased trade leading to closure of business and industry; Inflation; Unemployment; Emergence of black market; Decreased wages, purchasing power; Increase in personal/household loans; Decreased economic activity (industry, commerce, agriculture, etc) due to lack of trading partners, resources, funds, inputs.
Long term effects (Chronic)
1. Health - Reduction in the overall (general) health status of the population; Deterioration in health services and diminished national capacity to provide care; Loss of previous gains in preventive and curative care services; Resurgence of illness and disease associated with poverty (e.g. epidemics, infectious disease)
2. Economic - Chronically decreased economic activity; Decline in revenue from all sources; Decline in GDP, GNP, per capital income; Loss of trade partners, regional/international trade interests; Chronically high unemployment; Collapse of public and private infrastructure; Decline in public education.
3. Social - Increased poverty; Increase in social inequality (Income gap between rich and poor); Social upheaval, violence distress; Decrease in social cohesion; Psychosocial impact difficult to measure
Source: The Impact of Sanctions: A Study of UNICEF's Perspective, Table 3, Eric Hoskins, MD Consultant, UNICEF New York February 1998
Despite the assault on the people of Iraq from sanctions, Collin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State claims these sanctions help them: Powell explained that he would work with U.S. allies to "energize the sanctions regime" against Iraq.
After more than a decade of sanctions, no one on the Security Council wants them, except the United States and Britain. The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, has called them "cruel, because they exclusively punish the Iraqi people and the weakest among them, and ineffective, because they don't touch the regime". Had Saddam Hussein said on television "we think the price is worth it", referring to Unicef's figure of half a million child deaths, he would have been called a monster by the British government. Madeleine Albright said that. Whitehall remained silent. Iraq: the great cover-up: John Pilger
Even the most conservative, independent estimates hold economic sanctions responsible for a public health catastrophe of epic proportions. The World Health Organization believes at least 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each month from lack of access to food, medicine and clean water.
Malnutrition, disease, poverty and premature death now ravage a once relatively prosperous society whose public health system was the envy of the Middle East. I went to Iraq in September 1997 to oversee the U.N.'s "oil for food" program. I quickly realized that this humanitarian program was a Band-Aid for a U.N. sanctions regime that was quite literally killing people. Feeling the moral credibility of the U.N. was being undermined, and not wishing to be complicit in what I felt was a criminal violation of human rights, I resigned after 13 months.
To understand the gravity of the situation in Iraq, one must understand the damage inflicted by the 1991 Gulf War. The allied forces destroyed sewerage systems, water purification plants, electrical grids, hospitals, schools, grain silos-in short, the entire civilian infrastructure.
The consequences for Iraq have been disastrous. Raw sewage flows in the streets, contaminating the water, causing an upsurge in diarrhea, typhoid and cholera as the result. Electric power runs at less than 40 percent of pre-1990 levels. A major health problem is the sharp increase in cancers, leukemia and birth defects. This is most likely due to the use of depleted uranium weapons by allied forces during the Gulf War. Sanctions have wreaked havoc on the economy. To survive, families are forced to sell their belongings and to resort to begging and crime. School drop-out rates and childhood illiteracy have soared. Archeological sites, many of them bombed in the Gulf War, have been looted and their treasures sold overseas.
We are destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that. ...What makes the sanctions especially shocking is that the member states of the Security Council have all along been fully aware of their devastating effects.
"End the catastrophe of sanctions against Iraq" by Denis Halliday for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer February 12, 1999. Denis J. Halliday is the former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Relief in Iraq. He served with the United Nations for34 years, after which time he resigned from the U.N. in protest over the humanitarian cost of economic sanctions.
The Systematic Persecution of Children & Families
Studies show that the child mortality rate in Iraq has increased in government controlled areas of Iraq. Reports such as that by UNICEF say that child deaths have actually doubled in the last ten years. "The change in 10 years is unparalleled, in my experience," said Anupama Rao Singh in 2000, Unicef's senior representative in Iraq. "In 1989, the literacy rate was 95%; and 93% of the population had free access to modern health facilities. Parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children or children begging was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall well-being of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20%. In 10 years, child mortality has gone from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest."
UNICEF in its 1998 report The Impact of Sanctions reviewed the Impact of Sanctions on Children ...In sanctioned countries, as elsewhere, adversity weighs most heavily on the poor. And among the poor, children are the most vulnerable. They are least able to resist deprivation, most susceptible to malnutrition and disease, and rely wholly on their families' ability to cope with hardship and misfortune.
In both Iraq and Haiti, sanctions resulted in dramatic increases in the price of staple foods. In Iraq, 1995 market prices had increased to more than 1,000 times their pre-sanctions levels. More costly food directly contributed to rising rates of malnutrition. In Iraq, from 1991 to 1995, wasting among under-5's quadrupled to 12 percent, while stunting doubled to 28 percent.
The immunization of children also suffers in countries affected by sanctions...In Iraq, vaccination programs were suspended in late 1990 due to shortages of syringes and other consumables, and vaccine coverage did not regain pre-sanctions levels until late-1991. The incidence of vaccine-preventible diseases, including pertussis, measles, diphtheria and polio all increased in Iraq during 1991/92.
Furthermore, the increase in infectious diseases uniformly observed in all sanctioned countries has been partly attributed to the deterioration of water and sanitation services, made worse by long delays in obtaining Security Council approval for spare parts and shortages of purification chemicals.
The above impacts have been associated with measurable increases in infant and child deaths... In Iraq, under-5 mortality rates had tripled by late 1991, due to the combined influences of sanctions and war...
The impact of sanctions, however, is perhaps most visible upon entering the households of affected families. Faced with higher prices for food, medicines and other essential items, sanctioned families are increasingly unable to cope. Unemployment, loss of income, and inflation make household survival even more difficult. Foodstores are quickly depleted, family possessions (including property) are sold, and loans are undertaken to provide much-needed income. In Iraq, 48percent of households surveyed as early as September 1991 had already incurred heavy sanctions-related debts. Stress-related anxiety, depression, and violence are other manifestations of a family's growing inability to cope with hardship.
To supplement family incomes, children in sanctioned countries often leave school to seek employment, increasing school drop-out rates. Meanwhile women burdened with greatly increased household responsibilities face increasing difficulties in providing care for themselves and their families. Women's reproductive health and pre-natal care also suffers from the general decline in health services due to the ill-effects of sanctions. In Iraq, the proportion of babies born with low-birth-weight more than quadrupled (to 22 percent) between 1990 and 1995...
Finally, sanctions have a great impact on children with special needs. For example, in Iraq, children disabled by war were unable to procure prosthetics and other rehabilitative materials. Financial hardship led to child abandonment and increased begging. Other reports attest to the significant psychological impact of sanctions on children, the future impact of which is difficult to ascertain. UNICEF 1998 report "The Impact of Sanctions"
Not so smart sanctions
At the beginning of 2001, Britain hinted towards some "smart" sanctions in order to deflect criticism on the impact sanctions were having. Smart sanctions were passed in May 14, 2002 at the UN Security Council as the ninth revision to the original economic sanctions passed against Iraq in 1990. Yet, as von Sponeck commented, yet another UN official who resigned, "Like all previous revisions, "smart sanctions" leave the root cause of their troubles -- strangulation of the civilian economy -- unaddressed.". The proposed changes were nowhere near what was needed. As The Economist, the conservative British weekly, said, "The British proposal of 'smart sanctions' offers an aspirin where surgery is called for" (The Economist, 24th February 2001).
It was proposed that under these "smart" sanctions, Iraq would not have control over its own major source of income -- oil. The UK proposal required that the money Iraq earns from oil sales continue to be deposited into an escrow account controlled by the UN Security Council. Thus the US and the UK would retain the power to make decisions about when, where and most importantly, whether resources could be purchased to restore the health of Iraq's people and economy. The US and UK had at the time $3.71 billion in goods on "hold," preventing them from reaching the Iraqi people (S-G report, 18 May 2001, para 18). Smart sanctions were therefore an attempt by the U.S. and U.K. governments to spin things so that they are no longer blamed for the suffering that will certainly continue in Iraq under their plan.
In the book Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002 the campaign group Voices in the Wilderness remarked "Resolution 1409 (the "smart sanctions" resolution) is a hollow solution to an urgent humanitarian crisis. ...the change was mostly aimed at winning a public relations battle, not relieving ordinary Iraqis' suffering.
"The resolution was intended to blunt any drive to end the sanctions altogether and to deflate criticism that the measures are hurting ordinary Iraqis more than their leader," Somini Sengupta reported in the New York Times. "It also seemed part of the diplomatic groundwork the Bush administration is seeking to lay as it presses its case that Mr. Hussein should be removed from power, perhaps by force."
In the words of the New York Times Magazine, the UN sanctions were "creating a P.R. nightmare of hungry children," particularly for the US government, "but smart sanctions created the impression of doing something."
At the time Resolution 1409 was adopted, $5 billion in contracts were "on hold," largely because of holds placed by the United States in the UN sanctions committee. Still, US and British officials place all of the blame on the Iraqi government,
UN workers on the ground in Iraq have a very different perspective, "The [oil-for-food] distribution network is second to none," Adnan Jarra, a UN spokesperson in Iraq, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "They [the Iraqis] are very efficient. We have not found anything that went anywhere it was not supposed to." Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002
U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply
Thomas J. Nagy writes in The Progressive Magazine that he "discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay..."
The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens. The document goes into great technical detail about the sources and quality of Iraq's water supply. The quality of untreated water "generally is poor," and drinking such water "could result in diarrhea," the document says. It notes that Iraq's rivers "contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur." The document notes that the importation of chlorine "has been embargoed" by sanctions. "Recent reports indicate the chlorine supply is critically low." Food and medicine will also be affected, the document states. "Food processing, electronic, and, particularly, pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants," it says. ...In cold language, the document spells out what is in store: "Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals and desalination membranes. Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were careful to boil water." The document gives a timetable for the destruction of Iraq's water supplies. "Iraq's overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt," it says. "Although Iraq is already experiencing a loss of water treatment capability, it probably will take at least six months (to June 1991) before the system is fully degraded." This document, which was partially declassified but unpublicised in 1995.
Recently, I have come across other DIA documents that confirm the Pentagon's monitoring of the degradation of Iraq's water supply. These documents have not been publicized until now. The first one in this batch is called "Disease Information," and is also dated January 22, 1991. At the top, it says, "Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad." The analysis is blunt: "Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems." The document proceeds to itemize the likely outbreaks. It mentions "acute diarrhea" brought on by bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, and salmonella, or by protozoa such as giardia, which will affect "particularly children," or by rotavirus, which will also affect "particularly children," a phrase it puts in parentheses. And it cites the possibilities of typhoid and cholera outbreaks.
The second DIA document, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq," states: "Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing." It adds: "Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased since the beginning of Desert Storm. . . . Current public health problems are attributable to the reduction of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification and distribution, electricity, and the decreased ability to control disease outbreaks." This document lists the "most likely diseases during the next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely)."
The third document in this series, "Medical Problems in Iraq," is dated March 15, 1991. It says: "Communicable diseases in Baghdad are more widespread than usually observed during this time of the year and are linked to the poor sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplies and improper sewage disposal) resulting from the war. According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)/World Health Organization report, the quantity of potable water is less than 5 percent of the original supply, there are no operational water and sewage treatment plants, and the reported incidence of diarrhea is four times above normal levels. Additionally, respiratory infections are on the rise. Children particularly have been affected by these diseases."
The fourth document, "Status of Disease at Refugee Camps," is dated May1991 . The summary says, "Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps. Further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation." The reason for this outbreak is clearly stated again. "The main causes of infectious diseases, particularly diarrhea, dysentery, and upper respiratory problems, are poor sanitation and unclean water. These diseases primarily afflict the old and young children."
The fifth document, "Health Conditions in Iraq, June 1991," is still heavily censored... Source observed that the Iraqi medical system was in considerable disarray, medical facilities had been extensively looted, and almost all medicines were in critically short supply. In one refugee camp, the document says, "at least 80 percent of the population" has diarrhea. At this same camp, named Cukurca, "cholera, hepatitis type B, and measles have broken out." Protein malnutrition 'kwashiorkor' was observed in Iraq "for the first time," the document adds. "Gastroenteritis was killing children. . . . In the south, 80 percent of the deaths were children (with the exception of Al Amarah, where 60 percent of deaths were children)."
As these documents illustrate, the United States knew sanctions had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality. ...Over the last decade, Washington extended the toll by continuing to withhold approval for Iraq to import the few chemicals and items of equipment it needed in order to clean up its water supply. For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason. No one can say that the United States didn't know what it was doing.
Increases in Cancer
The journalist John Pilger in his January 2001 article entitled 'Iraq the great cover up' wrote ... In 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned that, if particles from merely 8 per cent of the DU used in the Gulf were inhaled, there could be "300,000 potential deaths". ...For the Iraqi people, however, the cover-up continues. What has been striking about the political and media reaction over the past fortnight is that most of the victims of depleted uranium (DU) have rated barely a mention. Yet Tony Blair himself was made aware of their suffering when he was sent, in March 1999, UN statistics, published in the British Medical Journal, showing a sevenfold increase in cancer in southern Iraq between 1989 and 1994.
In Basra's hospitals, the cancer wards are overflowing. Before the Gulf war, they did not exist. "The dust carries death," Dr Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians, told me. "Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We are living through another Hiroshima. Of course, we don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed [under sanctions] to get the equipment to conduct a proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level in our bodies. We suspect depleted uranium. There simply can be no other explanation."
The Sanctions Committee in New York has blocked or delayed a range of cancer diagnostic equipment and drugs, even painkillers. Professor Karol Sikora, as chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organisation, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons." Professor Sikora told me: "The saddest thing I saw in Iraq was children dying because there was no chemotherapy and no pain control. It seemed crazy they couldn't have morphine, because for everybody with cancer pain, it is the best drug. When I was there, they had a little bottle of aspirin pills to go round 200 patients in pain." Although there have since been improvements in some areas, more than 1,000 life-saving items remain "on hold" in New York, with Kofi Annan personally appealing for their release "without delay". John Pilger Jan 2001; Iraq the great cover up.
Oil & Colonial Motivations
This is longstanding Anglo-American policy. Contrary to the propaganda version about protecting Iraq's ethnic peoples, the objective is to prevent a Kurdish secession in the north and the establishment of a Shi'ite religious state in the rest of the country, while maintaining the west's dominance of the region and its access to cheap oil. Iraq: the great cover-up: John Pilger: 19 Jan 2001
Iraq possesses the world's second largest proven oil reserves, currently estimated at 112.5 billion barrels, about 11 percent of the world total, and its gas fields are immense, as well. Many experts believe that Iraq has additional undiscovered oil reserves, which might double the total when serious prospecting resumes, putting Iraq nearly on a par with Saudi Arabia. Iraq's oil is of high quality and it is very inexpensive to produce, making it one of the world's most profitable oil sources. Oil companies hope to gain production rights over these rich fields of Iraqi oil, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In the view of an industry source it is "a boom waiting to happen." As rising world demand depletes reserves in most world regions over the next 10 to 15 years, Iraq's oil will gain increasing importance in global energy supplies. According to one industry expert: "There is not an oil company in the world that doesn't have its eye on Iraq."
Geopolitical rivalry among major nations throughout the past century has often turned on control of such key oil resources. Five companies dominate the world oil industry, two US-based, two primarily UK-based, and one primarily based in France. US-based Exxon Mobil looms largest among the world's oil companies and by some yardsticks measures as the world's biggest company. The United States consequently ranks first in the corporate oil sector, with the UK second and France trailing as a distant third. Considering that the US and the UK act almost alone as sanctions advocates and enforcers, and that they are the headquarters of the world's four largest oil companies, we cannot ignore the possible relationship of sanctions policy with this powerful corporate interest.
The US and the UK governments also see control over Iraqi and Gulf oil as essential to their broader military, geostrategic, and economic interests. At the same time, though, other states and oil companies hope to gain a large or even dominant position in Iraq. As de-nationalization sweeps through the oil sector, international companies see Iraq as an extremely attractive potential field of expansion. France and Russia, the longstanding insiders, pose the biggest challenge to future Anglo-American domination, but serious competitors from China, Germany and Japan also play in the Iraq sweepstakes.
During the 1990s, Russia's Lukoil, China National Petroleum Corporation and France's TotalFinaElf held contract talks with the government of Iraq over plans to develop Iraqi fields as soon as sanctions are lifted. Lukoil reached an agreement in 1997 to develop Iraq's West Qurna field, while China National signed an agreement for the North Rumailah field in the same year. France's Total at the same time held talks for future development of the fabulous Majnun field.
US and UK companies have been very concerned that their rivals might gain a major long-term advantage in the global oil business. "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to," enthused Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr in a 1998 speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, in which he pronounced his strong support for sanctions. Sanctions have kept the rivals at bay, a clear advantage. ...Direct military intervention by the US-UK offers a tempting but dangerous gamble that might put Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron in immediate control of the Iraqi oil boom, but at the risk of backlash from a regional political explosion.
In testimony to Congress in 1999, General Anthony C. Zinni, commander in chief of the US Central Command, testified that the Gulf region, with its huge oil reserves, is a "vital interest" of "long standing" for the United States and that the US "must have free access to the region's resources." "Free access," it seems, means both military and economic control of these resources. This has been a major goal of US strategic doctrine ever since the end of World War II. ...A looming US war against Iraq is only comprehensible in this light. For all the talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and human rights violations by Saddam Hussein, these are not the core issues driving US policy. Rather, it is "free access" to Iraqi oil and the ultimate control over that oil by US and UK companies that raises the stakes high enough to set US forces on the move and risk the stakes of global empire. As Investor's Business Daily notes, if the US were to occupy Iraq, it would not only "gain a central staging base for future [military] operations," but "It would take control of11 percent of the world's oil reserves, too. That 11 percent would help pay for the occupation" and "could also be leverage against oil-dependent Arab nations -- just as the U.S. used cheap oil in the 1980s to bankrupt the USSR." Voices in the Wilderness, Sanctions: Myth & Reality. Originally published in Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002
Habib-ur-Rahman Khilafah.com Journal 06 February 2003
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Lowry unrealistic about depleted uranium
By ROGER LONGLEY GUEST COLUMNIST
Thursday, February 6, 2003
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/107382_uranium06.shtml
The Jan. 28 column by Rich Lowry on the hazards of depleted uranium tops my list for disinformation ("Depleted uranium effective but not politically incorrect"). He is in the ballpark when he says 300 tons of depleted uranium was used in the first Gulf War, but he is confusing the issue, and perhaps himself, when he says DU is depleted.
Most of the radiation in natural uranium comes from Uranium 238 (U-238). What largely remains in DU is U-238, its decay products and other contaminants from irradiation of uranium. Gamma radiation from this mix can be dangerous when a large quantity of DU is finely divided, even without ingesting or inhaling it.
It is highly misleading to say that living next to a ton of U-238 is harmless because the issue is not the hazard of DU as a metal but its effect as a gaseous, dispersed oxidized material after it has been used as an armor piercing weapon. DU burns as it passes through armor.
Lowry further confuses the issue when he says no adverse health effects have been found for DU. There have been no studies where DU has been used as a weapon so this statement is meaningless.
A decaying U-238 atom presents the same danger as a decaying Plutonium 239 (Pu-239) atom but U-238 is considered harmless because it decays about 200,000 times slower than Pu-239. Where Pu-239 is dangerous if you ingest a fraction of a millionth of a gram, you have to consume about 0.025 grams of U-238 to produce the same hazard.
Possibly 100 tons of the 300 tons of DU used in Iraq were converted on impact into gaseous uranium oxide or a finely divided uranium powder. Both the oxide and the powder will settle out on the ground locally or drift in the wind. In terms of grams, this is 100,000,000 grams, enough to be harmful to hundreds of millions of people if it is ingested.
Inhalation of U-238 into your lungs is much more serious than ingestion. Inhalation is considered dangerous if the air concentration of U-238 is greater than a millionth of a gram per cubic meter. If 100 million grams of U-238 oxide and finely divided U-238 particles were spread out on the ground and stirred into the air up to a height of 1 meter, it would cover more than 10 million square miles at this concentration.
In fact DU is not spread that far in Iraq and exists locally in much higher, more dangerous concentrations. Even today one can measure gamma radiation levels up to 3.5 millirad/hour around the tanks on the "Highway of Death," a separate hazard from inhaling or ingesting DU.
Defenders of DU like to say uranium is everywhere, that we all have a little uranium in us. This is true. There is a lot of uranium in the ocean, but you would have to drink about 25 tons of seawater before you would need to worry. If you dug up all the dirt in your back yard, it's doubtful you would be able to detect any uranium.
The issue with DU as a weapon is all about concentration. We should understand from such places as Hanford, it is the localized concentration of radioactive materials that presents problems. Even though DU is weakly radioactive, its use as a weapon in multi-ton quantities raises the level of radioactivity in the area of use to dangerous levels.
This use of DU in armor-piercing ammunition effectively puts us in the same class as someone who would use a "dirty" bomb to contaminate an area with radioactivity. The difference is that we do it, and have done it, on a much grander scale than a terrorist could possibly realize.
Roger Longley of Friday Harbor was a senior nuclear engineer for nine years at General Dynamics/Fort Worth.
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MP in 'shouting match' over Gulf illness
February 6, 2003
EDP 24 (UK)
http://www.edp24.co.uk/Content/Forums/ExPatsHome.asp
Norwich MP Ian Gibson was involved in a Commons "shouting match" with a defence minister yesterday after his scientific credentials were questioned in a debate about the dangers to health that British troops may face in a new war against Iraq.
The spat occurred when the minister, Lewis Moonie, asked what Dr Gibson - the chairman of the Commons Science Committee and the former Dean of Biology at the University of East Anglia - and other critics of the Government's attitude to "Gulf War illness" actually knew about isotopes.
The Norwich North had been intervening in a debate to voice concerns about the effect on troops of the use of depleted uranium shells in a war against Saddam Hussein's forces, and referred to evidence that they cause cancer.
Asked afterwards if Dr Moodie knew of his expertise in the subject, Dr Gibson replied: "He knew exactly." He admitted that he was "furious" about the minister's "patronising attitude".
He and the minister twice locked horns in a debate - led by Liberal Democrat MP Paul Tyler - in which the Govern-ment was warned that British troops could be exposed to the "chemical equivalent of friendly fire" while engaged in hostilities against Iraq.
Members from all sides claimed those deployed in or near the region could face unnecessary health risks because the Government had not learned lessons from the 1991 Gulf War.
They also complained of a lack of compensation for veterans and inadequacy of research into possible Gulf War syndrome, and said US authorities had adopted a "much more sympathetic approach".
Mr Moonie said no one denied some veterans were sick and insisted there was no attempt to "push it under the carpet".
Mr Tyler raised concerns about exposure of Gulf War troops to organophosphate pesticides - which can lead to acute poisoning.
He emphasised that "the failure of the Ministry of Defence to even acknowledge the existence of specific Gulf War illness has been especially scandalous". Even worse, he warned, would be a failure to learn lessons. "If British troops are deployed on our behalf it would be truly scandalous if they are also exposed to unnecessary risk to their health by their own military planners in the MoD - the chemical equivalent of friendly fire."
-------- iran
INTERVIEW - UN wants to verify if Iran atomic plans peaceful
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
February 6, 2003
Story by Louis Charbonneau
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19719/newsDate/6-Feb-2003/story.htm
VIENNA - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said he plans to urge Iran to sign an agreement giving the U.N. the power to thoroughly inspect its nuclear facilities to verify that Tehran is not secretly developing atomic weapons.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei heads to Iran later this month with a team of United Nations experts to discuss Iran's nuclear intentions, as well as the United States' allegations Tehran wants to make atomic arms.
"I would like to discuss with Iranian officials the possibility of Iran joining the Additional Protocol," ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
"That's a new authority given to us after the Iraq Gulf War, enabling us to do more, get more information and more access to facilities," he said.
"That I think would clearly create additional assurance with regard to the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme."
Parties to the Additional Protocol agree to grant IAEA inspectors access to all their facilities. If the IAEA deems it necessary, U.N. experts can carry out inspections with virtually no prior notification.
The protocol was created after the IAEA uncovered Iraq's covert atomic weapons programme in 1991.
"I have been assured by the Iranian authorities that all Iranian activities are for peaceful purposes," ElBaradei said.
The U.S. has said Iran intends to use the Russian-built Bushehr light-water reactor, as well as two new plants under construction, to develop nuclear weapons.
Tehran rejected the U.S. allegations and said Bushehr and the two plants near the central Iranian towns of Natanz and Arak were intended for peaceful purposes.
"I'm going to visit (the new plants) with my colleagues when we go there on February 25," ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei welcomed Russia's agreement to take all of the spent fuel from the Bushehr plant to prevent it being diverted to a weapons programme. Experts had said Iran could turn spent fuel rods into a "dirty" bomb to disperse radioactive material.
"(Bushehr) is under IAEA safeguards and Russia is going to take back the spent fuel. So the question of proliferation per se out of Bushehr should not arise," ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei said he understood the U.S. concerns and wants to verify Iran's protests of innocence.
"For the agency, our role is to verify that all the nuclear facilities in Iran are under safeguards and that Iran's programme is dedicated to peaceful purposes," he said.
The IAEA has a mandate to ensure nuclear facilities around the world are used solely for civilian purposes as well as coordinating global nuclear power safety.
-------- iraq
Blix warns Baghdad ahead of visit
February 6, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030206-121447-9891r.htm
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix warned Thursday his report to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction would not be positive unless Iraq comes completely clean about its WMD program.
"What has not worked is for the Iraqi side either to present prohibited items for destruction or present evidence that they are finished," he said after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.
He urged further cooperation from Baghdad.
"We hope at this late hour ... that they will come to a positive response," he said. "If they do not do that, then our report next Friday will not be what we would like it to be."
Blix and his counterpart at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, are to present to the Security Council details of further inspections carried out by weapons experts of sites in Iraq believed to conceal proscribed WMD.
The two men were to be in Baghdad for meeting with top Iraqi officials this weekend.
"It is important we have a good conversation before we go to Baghdad," ElBaradei said before his meeting with Blair in London.
Their comments came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council the most detailed case yet that Iraq has attempted to hide from U.N. inspectors its existing stocks of chemical and biological weapons and continued attempts to produce more.
In his show-and-tell presentation, Powell also gave new details of the alleged link between the Iraqi regime and al Qaida network and reiterated U.S. claims -- disputed by some experts -- that Iraq had sought materials to build uranium enrichment equipment to help make nuclear weapons.
Iraq on Thursday dismissed Powell's presentation.
"Well, all that is fiction," said Gen. Amer al-Saadi, Iraqi science adviser. "It is simply not true."
He said Iraq would present a detailed letter of rebuttal of the U.S. claims to the Security Council.
Calling the presentation "mainly for home consumption, for the uninformed," al-Saadi said he was heartened "that a lot of people around the world are of the same opinion that it was intended mainly for the uninformed."
He called parts of Powell's presentation "misquotes and fabrications unworthy of a superpower."
"They don't need to do that," he said.
Also Thursday, European members of the U.N. Security Council remained split over how to disarm Iraq, with Britain, Spain and Bulgaria urging military action and France, Germany and Russia pressing for U.N. inspections to continue.
France, the strongest opponent of the U.S. drive to use force to disarm Saddam, acknowledged Thursday that Baghdad must respond to the demands of the international community.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said, however, the time was "not yet right" for a U.N. resolution authorizing force.
Britain, Washington's closest ally on its Iraq position, said Iraq could still avoid military conflict, but time is fast running out.
"The Iraqi regime must decide whether it will comply with its obligations or face the consequences," Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana welcomed the U.S. evidence.
"Its content and also the way it was presented were very solid," he said in a statement. "It has to be taken seriously by everybody. Everybody should reflect after this report."
Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member EU, said time was running out for Baghdad, but "there is still hope for a diplomatic resolution of the issue."
In other developments, Turkish parliamentarians voted to approve giving the United States permission to renovate its bases and ports in the country. The move is seen as the closest indication that Turkey, one of Washington's closest allies in the Muslim world, backs the U.S. position in the event of a war with Iraq.
NATO leaders, however, did little to bolster Turkey's position in the event Iraq attacks it during any military conflict. NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels failed to reach an agreement on measures to protect Turkey in the case of an attack by Iraq. For the third week in a row France, Germany and Belgium insisted contingency plans were premature while inspections continued.
Since resuming searches on Nov. 27 after a four-year hiatus, more than 100 inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have visited over 500 sites across Iraq that are suspected of involvement in Iraq's programs to develop WMD.
A team from the UNIMOVIC visited the Educational Laboratories Directorate at Saddam Medical Center in Baghdad on Thursday.
The inspectors arrived at 9:00 a.m. and met with Jasim Tumah, director of the laboratories, before conducting their inspections.
"They were comfortable because they did not any find any violations," Tumah said. "They also made sure that these laboratories extend services to patients in the hospital and others visiting the consultative clinic."
He said the visit was the first by inspectors to the facility since 1998.
During the 2-1/2 hour meeting, the U.N. experts inspected all the floors and the bacteriology, immunity, genetics, blood diseases, tissue, and clinical chemistry laboratories.
Iraq maintains that it possesses no WMD and denies any links with terrorist groups.
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Weapons Inspector Warns Iraq to Disarm or Face Grave Problems
February 6, 2003
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/international/middleeast/07IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - A top United Nations weapons inspector exhorted Iraq today to "show drastic change" in cooperating to disarm or be prepared for grave problems. But several important countries continued to hold out for further United Nations inspections, and not war.
The call by the inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came amid signs of a possible wavering in France's outspoken opposition to military action against Iraq. After a closely watched report on Iraq on Wednesday at the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, France urged an early deadline of Feb. 14 for Iraq to provide urgently sought answers to arms monitors, and declined to rule out military force.
But Russia indicated today that its support for continued inspections had not been budged by Mr. Powell's presentation, and French officials said they agreed. The comments followed a phone conversation between President Vladimir Putin and President Jacques Chirac.
China expressed a similar view.
Iraq said that it would send the United Nations a detailed letter refuting Washington's allegations that Baghdad had actively moved to displace and conceal banned weapons of mass destruction.
Other developments increased the sense that war might be growing closer: the Turkish Parliament voted to allow the United States to renovate military bases for a possible invasion of northern Iraq; the NATO secretary-general predicted a favorable response to American requests for Iraq-related assistance; and Britain said it would boost its air force presence in the Gulf to about 100 aircraft, a level similar to that deployed in the 1991 war there.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said that diplomatic efforts would continue.
But Secretary Powell, whom many critics of a possible war had looked to to defend that position within the Bush administration, indicated today that he saw dwindling prospects for diplomacy.
"I don't like war," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Nobody likes war. The president doesn't like war, doesn't want a war. But this is a problem we cannot walk away from."
President Putin and President Chirac agreed during a telephone call today that the Iraqi crisis should be solved without force, Agence France-Presse reported from Moscow. The "positions of Russia and France correspond, and stand in favor of solving the Iraqi problem through political-diplomatic means," the Kremlin said in a statement.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that Mr. Powell's evidence against Iraq had placed the burden squarely on Baghdad. But he insisted that inspections should continue and added that "one or several" more United Nations resolutions might be required before the Security Council would authorize force.
He again left open a door, nonetheless, for a Russian turn-about. No final decision should be made, he said, until all the freshly offered American intelligence had been thoroughly analyzed.
In another sign of shifting positions, reporters at a regular White House briefing raised several questions about how a postwar Iraq would be administered and tellingly, Mr. Fleischer, answered rather than deflecting them as premature.
"The plan is for a government to emerge both from inside and outside Iraq," he said, apparently alluding to exile groups. He said that administration would be handled by "a number of agencies, including international." All this would happen under an umbrella of United States military protection.
And Mr. Fleischer added that in the aftermath of any war, humanitarian relief to Iraq would be a priority for the United States.
With events gaining pace, Mr. ElBaradei and the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, met in London with Prime Minister Tony Blair, then headed for a weekend of meetings in Baghdad that they have described as crucial.
Both inspectors said that Iraq must dramatically improve cooperation if it is to avert war.
"The message coming from the Security Council is very clear: that Iraq is not cooperating fully, that they need to show drastic change in terms of cooperation," Mr. ElBaradei said. If Baghdad's response is not dramatically positive, Blix "then our report next Friday will not be what we would like it to be."
"Time is very critical," he continued. "We need to show progress."
Mr. Blair has suggested that Feb. 14 - the date when the weapons inspectors are to make their next report to the Security Council - could be a deadline for deciding on war; American officials have hinted at a similar timetable.
Belgium called today for an emergency meeting of the European Union, 13 of its candidate states, and Iraq's neighbors to discuss the crisis after that date.
The crisis has severely divided Europe, with a growing list of countries lining up in support of the United States and Britain, but two of Europe's historical powers, France and Germany, standing in opposition to war.
But Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, dismissed French calls, made after Mr. Powell's speech, for bolstering weapons inspections. What was needed, he said, was not more inspectors, but "more, much, much more cooperation from the Iraqi regime."
The United States and Britain have said that Iraq already is in "material breach" of United Nations resolutions, justifying its forcible disarmament unless Baghdad becomes much more forthcoming immediately.
In Brussels, the North Atlantic Council, NATO's executive group, again deferred a decision on a United States request for military assistance, mainly to defend Turkey in event of war. But the alliance's secretary-general, Lord George Robertson, said that unless any member objected formally by Monday, the military aid would be authorized automatically.
France, Germany and Belgium, which had resisted the request as premature, appeared unlikely to take the step of formally opposing the request by NATO's most powerful and influential member.
The planned measures would include the deployment of AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot anti-missile systems, in-air refueling planes and NATO's anti-chemical, biological and nuclear weapons center.
Mr. Powell said earlier on CBS-TV that only a substantive change in policy by President Saddam Hussein could now avert war, "not just another way to play cat-and-mouse with the inspectors."
"So, in my judgment," he added, "it will not be enough for him to simply say, `Okay, I'll now start to allow the U-2 flights' that inspectors want in support of their ground efforts.
"He needs to come clean."
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Nuke Agency: Iraq Must Boost Cooperation
February 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Inspectors-Iraq.html
LONDON (AP) -- Iraq must show ``drastic change'' in its cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, the U.N.'s chief nuclear inspector said Thursday.
``Iraq is not cooperating fully, they need to show drastic change in terms of cooperation,'' said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
ElBaradei spoke after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. At his side was Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who also met with Blair.
ElBaradei and Blix were in London to brief Blair on their search for banned weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They are traveling to Baghdad this weekend to meet with senior Iraqi officials and are to report to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 14.
``We need to show progress in our report,'' ElBaradei said. ``Our mission in Baghdad this weekend is crucial. We hope we will secure full, 100 percent cooperation on the part of Iraq.''
-------- iraq
The Smoking Gun
Khidhir Hamza Tried to Help Iraq Make a Nuclear Bomb.
Now He's Trying to Stop It.
By Richard Leiby
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32095-2003Feb5?language=printer
Married 32 years, the nuclear physicist and his wife share a typical brick-and-siding home in Northern Virginia, with a big-screen TV in the family room and a bowl of cashews beckoning on the coffee table. A photomontage shows their three sons, dark-haired, handsome and grown. Here's the family on a vacation at Luray Caverns.
Something's missing, though. Where are the wedding pictures? The cute childhood photographs?
All left behind in Baghdad, says Khidhir Hamza, the highest-ranking government scientist to escape from Iraq and live to tell the tale. To take a family album risks being found out as a defector, and death: "You must bring along nothing that could implicate you," he says.
Hamza, 64, has only old passports to document his previous life. One bears a treasured date stamp: Sept. 15, 1995, the day he made it to the United States.
Anybody who wonders why Iraqi scientists have not been cooperating with United Nations inspectors, or how instrumental they are in concealing banned weapons programs, need only consult Hamza. For nearly 20 years he worked to arm the Iraqi regime with atomic weapons, while Hussein denied to the world that he wanted the Bomb. Two years ago he published a book about the Faustian bargain he struck as Hussein's "personal nuclear adviser." Its title is "Saddam's Bombmaker," and Hamza says on the opening page, "I am lucky to be alive."
Before sliding behind the wheel of his aging American luxury car, Hamza pauses in his driveway. "That house," he says, pointing down the block, "a deputy sheriff." It's security by coincidence, but gives Hamza and his wife, Souham, a measure of comfort.
The defector is highly visible -- he made the rounds on TV and radio yesterday after Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. address -- but requests that his home town not be identified, citing "possible enemy resources here." A few years after defecting, he feared that he was being shadowed by an Iraqi agent; a reporter who wanted to interview Hamza at home had to agree to arrive blindfolded.
"We are living normally," he says now. He's been giving speeches, consulting with government officials, meeting with a Hollywood scriptwriter. Sales of his autobiography -- co-written with spy-tale flourish by Washington journalist Jeff Stein -- have accelerated with the tempo of U.S. war drums.
The book's revelations have been invoked repeatedly by the Bush administration as part of the rationale for invading Iraq. Alluding to Hamza, the president said in an October speech to the nation, "Information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue."
Bush didn't mention that Hamza effectively retired from Iraq's nuclear program in 1991, then spent the next few years plotting his escape through northern Iraq. To hawks, Hamza qualifies as a smoking gun because he can attest to a historical pattern of deceit. As Powell showed yesterday, multiple defector sources and the cumulative weight of their statements help build the case against Hussein at a time when U.N. inspectors are discovering little in the way of hardware or documents.
In 1995, "as a result of another defector," the United States discovered Hussein's "crash program," initiated after the invasion of Kuwait, to complete a crude nuclear weapon, Powell said yesterday.
"He was referring to me," Hamza says. The crash program goal, he told U.S. intelligence officials, was to rush a nuclear bomb into production, most likely for a doomsday attack on Israel if U.S. forces threatened Saddam's survival. Baghdad and the Bomb
Schooled in the 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Florida State University, Hamza has a doctorate in nuclear physics, an easy command of English, and the ability to deploy an arsenal of frightening technical details about uranium enrichment, aluminum cylinders, centrifuges, diffusion and "dirty bombs." On TV news shows and in congressional hearings, he echoes suggestions that Hussein will possess enough fissile material to make a bomb in two to three years.
Iraq's nuclear capabilities remain a matter of dispute, but Powell could have been summarizing Hamza's book when he declared yesterday, "Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb." Helping realize that goal -- whether shopping for a reactor in France or securing complicated equipment in Germany -- was Hamza, who writes that it all started in 1972, when he and others "scratched out our first memo for a bomb."
Some of those pioneers were jailed or tortured after questioning Hussein's intentions. The dictator's son-in-law Hussein Kamel was executed when he unwisely returned to Iraq after defecting to Jordan and spilling his guts about banned weapons programs. Kamel was Hamza's boss.
In his speech, Powell suggested that Iraqi officials routinely intimidate scientists or conceal their whereabouts. "A dozen experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein's guesthouses," he said, with a seemingly sarcastic emphasis on "guest."
So it doesn't surprise Hamza that scientists are not flocking into the arms of the current U.N. inspection team, despite U.S. assurances of asylum. Cooperation is a potential death sentence, he says. "Talking to an Iraqi scientist inside Iraq is an endangerment. Even asking him to talk is an endangerment." 'Saddam and Me'
The son of a rice farmer, Hamza was born in 1939, in a village ravaged by disease. "Only five of the 14 children survived," he writes, "and the last one killed my mother in childbirth."
By 1962, thanks to assistance from the Iraqi government, Hamza arrived in Cambridge, Mass., to study nuclear physics -- with the understanding that he had to repay Iraq with one year of service for every year of subsidized schooling.
His book confronts a paradox about Iraq: How did such a cultured, intellectual society end up at the mercy of a fiendish lout like Saddam Hussein? Perhaps the question arises because of the way co-writer Stein decided Hamza should organize the narrative. He recalls making the scientist put two Post-It notes on his computer screen as reminders.
The one on the left said "Me and Saddam." The one on the right said "Saddam and me."
Despite his penchant for numbing technicalities in conversation, Hamza wanted to produce a page-turner. He says he planned to write a book from the day he defected, turning down a CIA resettlement and witness protection program in part so that he could write freely.
The resulting manuscript won a six-figure advance and stirred a film deal thanks, perhaps, to its focus on Hamza's personal life. It details his first carefree eight years in America -- when he quaffed beer, played poker, dated girls, "bought a car and Beach Boys eight-tracks" -- and his return to Iraq, his arranged marriage to Souham. He was 32 and she was not yet 16.
"I chose him," she says, standing near the stove where dinner is simmering. Dressed in a purple top and flowered slacks, she reminds her husband with a fetching smile that he was but one of her "many" suitors.
"Always he was talking about America," she adds, remembering how he said, "Someday I'll take you to America." See No Evil
As a government scientist in Iraq, Hamza piled up prestige and perks, including ranches, trips abroad, fancy cars. The Baath Party purges, the executions and deportations of political enemies -- communists and Shiites -- did not ping his conscience. As long as he wasn't the target, things were fine.
"We turned a blind eye," Hamza says quietly, sitting in his living room. "Yeah, we turned a blind eye but there is actually also nothing we could have done."
And, as he puts it in the book, "I was too old, too comfortable, too scared to risk my wife and children and leave everything behind."
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, coupled with his demand for a "crash program" aimed at nuking Israel, ultimately pushed Hamza over the edge.
"That told us we were really working in a lunatic asylum," he says.
He eased himself out of the nuclear program, took a university job, and grew rich as an insider in Iraq's stock market. He escaped alone, leaving his family vulnerable for several months, but eventually a CIA "exfiltration" team helped to smuggle them into the Kurdish-ruled north.
"My tortuous journey had a happy ending," Hamza writes. "But I left behind scores of unhappy Iraqi scientists. . . . Most of them, I am sure, would like to get out. It is the civilized world's urgent duty to help them." The Top Tier
In the summer of 1998, when Hamza first went public with his story about Saddam's relentless desire for the Bomb, much of the press ignored him. The country was transfixed by the saga of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
But in March 2001, the scientist found himself sitting next to an influential Republican named Richard Perle at a seminar at George Washington University. He briefed Perle, one of the earliest and most vehement proponents of regime change in Iraq, about his past.
"I came away very impressed, thinking this is a sensible, sober fellow," says Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board. Hamza said he'd been debriefed only by low-level "civil servants" in the Clinton years. Perle soon introduced the defector to the top tier of the Bush administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
On Tuesday afternoon, Hamza and Perle are sitting side by side in a garish dining room at the Willard Inter-Continental, joining a panel of former arms inspectors and other hawks. They dutifully denounce Saddam Hussein as a dangerous maniac and urge support for an invasion.
Afterward, this odd, portly pair -- Perle the Washington insider, Hamza the former paladin of Saddam's palace -- get down to the details. They delight in swapping the latest intelligence about how Iraq may have modified aluminum tubes to enrich uranium.
It's something of a preview of Powell's U.N. assertions: that those tubes, which Iraq said were for ordinary missiles, were crucial to building a nuclear weapon. "This was part of the deception program," Perle says. Hamza nods in agreement. "I know, I know." The Marquee Defector
Once he dined and drank at Saddam's private club. Now he orders a $4.25 steak sandwich for lunch at a strip mall sub shop. With one son still in college, Hamza lives modestly. For the first time, Souham has taken a job.
He thinks the United States could have lured more high-level scientists from Iraq in the past if they'd treated them more generously, like the Soviet defectors. He summarizes the American attitude as "Tell us what you know, and goodbye, thank you." Because of what he calls "horrible" foul-ups by the INS, he and his family only recently became citizens.
"I'm not suffering financially," Hamza says, but mainly that's because of the book, a recent History Channel documentary and the movie deal. Trying out Hollywood lingo with an Arabic inflection, he says, "Hopefully next month it will get the green light."
Dan Gordon, who scripted "The Hurricane" with Denzel Washington and "Wyatt Earp" with Kevin Costner, has finished the screenplay. Peter Kalmbach, who heads BBC Films in Los Angeles, calls Hamza "a wonderful subject for a film" and describes him as "the smoldering gun."
"The tricky part is casting him. You know, Brad Pitt as an Arab?"
It's doubtful, but would be the perfect ending to this weird story: Saddam's bomb builder becomes an American idol.
----
Slovenia Says Iraq Wanted Nuke Equipment
February 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Slovenia-Iraq-Powell.html
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) -- Iraq tried in 1999 and 2000 to buy equipment that can be used to enrich uranium from Slovene companies, but Slovenia's government prevented it, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a speech Wednesday to the U.N. Security Council that Iraq had approached firms in Slovenia, Romania, India and Russia to buy equipment for magnet production and other technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel confirmed that Iraq had approached Slovene private firms to buy materials that can be used to enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, ministry spokesman Rok Srakar told The Associated Press on Thursday.
``There were attempts (by Iraq) of commercial dealings, but we were quick in preventing them,'' Srakar quoted Rupel as saying.
Rupel offered no other details. He argued that Powell's mention of Slovenia was a recognition of the country's efforts to help the U.S.-led war on terror.
Iraq is required to eliminate long-range missiles, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons under a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq has insisted it has destroyed all such weapons.
Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana said Wednesday that Iraq in 1995, 1996 and 1999 had tried to buy uranium-enriching equipment from his country. The Romanian secret services foiled the attempts, acting on tips from their U.S. counterparts, Geoana said.
Slovenia, which declared independence in 1991 and has been invited to join NATO, is one of 10 Eastern European nations that on Wednesday issued a declaration supporting Washington's drive to disarm Iraq.
Slovenia also aspires to join the European Union. The country also supports the EU stance that more time is needed for U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq before an attack, Rupel said.
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Doubts Remain About Purpose Of Specialized Aluminum Tubes
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32110-2003Feb5?language=printer
More than ever, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein remains "determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the United Nations yesterday. But he failed to settle a dispute over whether an intercepted batch of aluminum tubes constitutes proof of Iraq's nuclear ambitions.
Iraq's attempt to import tens of thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes over the past two years is at the core of the Bush administration's case against the Iraqi leader.
Powell yesterday sought to bolster the argument that Iraq intended to use the tubes to make enriched uranium, not artillery rockets, as Iraq has claimed. During its well-documented nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, Iraq used imported aluminum tubes to build gas centrifuges -- fast-spinning machines used to enrich uranium.
"There is no doubt in my mind," Powell said, "that these illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."
Powell released a few additional details about the attempted acquisition, revealing that Iraqi officials had ordered tubes with unusually exacting specifications and high tolerances for heat and stress.
Over a period of months, the Iraqi invoices called for "higher and higher levels of specification," including metallic coatings on inner and outer surfaces, he said.
Powell argued that Iraq would not have gone to such trouble and expense if the tubes were intended for ordinary rockets that "would soon be blown to shrapnel."
"It strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets," Powell said. "Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don't think so."
Powell's arguments were a direct challenge to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which after weeks of investigation concluded that the tubes were likely intended for Iraq's artillery rocket program. In a report to the U.N. Security Council last month, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said the tubes were not suitable for uranium enrichment without significant modification.
Other sources said the tubes exactly matched the dimensions of Iraq's existing arsenal of 81mm artillery rockets. Iraq had ordered the same type of aluminum tubes in the 1980s to replenish its rocket stockpile.
U.S. and international nuclear experts have been divided about the nature of Iraq's new -- and ultimately unsuccessful -- attempts to purchase the aluminum parts. Powell's additional evidence appeared to have only widened the disagreement.
One former scientist in Iraq's nuclear program called Powell's arguments "persuasive." Khidhir Hamza, a physicist who defected to the United States in 1994, acknowledged that the tubes sought by Iraq were not ideal for centrifuges, but he suggested that Iraq may have tried to throw off U.S. intelligence agents and disguise its true intentions. After extensive machine-tooling of the tubes, Iraq could have used them to make enough uranium for up to two bombs a year, Hamza said.
"Of course Iraq would not order cylinders with exact specifications for centrifuges, because such tubes would never have been shipped," Hamza said. "This is a standard Iraqi ploy."
But another expert familiar with Iraq's previous nuclear program said it was also typical of Iraq to "over-specify" when ordering common weapons materials and parts. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said Iraq's use of increasingly higher standards in ordering aluminum tubes stemmed from technical problems with its rocket production: Rockets made of lesser grades of aluminum were getting stuck in the launcher tubes.
"The tubes are an important indicator, but they are not specific to centrifuges," Albright said. "I would not feel comfortable arguing on this basis that Iraq has a nuclear program -- even though I personally believe it does."
The IAEA's ElBaradei, who is ultimately responsible for determining the truth about Iraq's nuclear program, declined to pass judgment on Powell's analysis. "We have listened to Secretary Powell's presentation," he said, "and will factor it into our analysis."
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Powell Lays Out Case Against Iraq
Evidence Shows Hussein Foiled Inspections, Secretary Tells U.N.
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32103-2003Feb5?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the U.N. Security Council today with satellite images, intercepted telephone conversations and information from Iraqi defectors in a bid to convince the American public and the world that new weapons inspections have failed to halt Iraq's banned weapons programs and that the hour was approaching for a decision on confronting President Saddam Hussein with force.
Speaking before a packed council chamber, Powell cited what he called an "accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior" to charge that Iraq does not intend to comply with last year's unanimous U.N. resolution giving Baghdad one last chance to disarm and to outline new alleged links between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network.
While inspections may continue for some weeks, Powell warned the council that the United Nations has little choice but to act in the face of such evidence of Iraqi behavior, in effect serving notice that the Bush administration has made up its mind and is ready to launch an invasion of Iraq to force Hussein from power with or without formal U.N. backing.
"This body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately," Powell said.
As Powell addressed the Security Council, the Pentagon announced the mobilization of an additional 16,979 military reservists and National Guard members, bringing the total activated to 111,603, the largest number since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And at Fort Campbell, Ky., the Army's 101st Airborne Division -- likely a key component of any Iraqi invasion -- stepped up preparations for what appeared to be an imminent deployment order.
In his nearly 90-minute address, Powell accused Iraq of constructing an elaborate deception scheme that enabled officials to conceal programs to produce biological weapons in mobile trucks and trains, to build prohibited long-range missiles and to construct unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spreading biological or chemical agents over vast tracts of territory.
In an effort to broaden the indictment against Iraq, Powell also detailed new evidence of apparent links between Iraq and affiliates of al Qaeda. Powell noted that some of the ties may have a role in terrorist incidents in France, Britain, Spain and Russia -- all represented on the Security Council.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohamed Douri, was invited to attend the session and he dismissed Powell's assertions as "utterly unrelated to the truth."
"No new information was provided, mere sound recordings that cannot be ascertained as genuine," he said. "There are incorrect allegations, unnamed sources, unknown sources."
But Powell's statement, which was televised live to audiences around the world, appeared to generate new support for the Bush administration within Congress, with even critics of President Bush's Iraq policy saying that Powell made a compelling case. Overseas, the reaction was more mixed. Powell's performance was widely praised, but many governments said he made a case for enhanced inspections, not war.
Powell also appeared to sway few minds on the Security Council.
Immediately after Powell spoke, the foreign ministers of France, Russia and China -- all of which hold veto power -- rejected the need for imminent military action and instead said the solution was more inspections. "Let us double, let us triple the number of inspectors. Let us open more regional offices. Let us go further than this," said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a vocal opponent of war, supported the French proposal to extend the inspections. But, he pointedly noted, Germany does not "hold any illusions on the inhuman and brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. The regime is terrible for the Iraqi people." Fischer added that he lacked the technical expertise to assess whether the intelligence presented to the council by Powell was convincing.
In a statement sure to annoy the Germans, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in testimony before Congress today, lumped Germany with Libya and Cuba as countries that have ruled out any role in a U.S.-led attack or postwar reconstruction of Iraq. "I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect, I believe," said Rumsfeld, who last month angered the German and French governments by referring to them as "old Europe."
The foreign ministers' council statements, however, had mostly been written before Powell spoke, and U.S. officials said afterward they believe the impact of Powell's presentation will become more apparent in the days ahead. Proponents of more inspections, officials said, will need to address the evidence of Iraqi deception outlined by Powell.
"The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction," Powell said. "But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: 'Enough. Enough.' "
One U.S. official noted with satisfaction that de Villepin, who two weeks ago threatened to veto an imminent military strike, today appeared to open the door to military action. "We rule out no option, including in the final analysis the recourse to force," he said.
After lunch, Powell raced through individual meetings with 11 foreign ministers whose countries are represented on the council, reinforcing the idea that the United Nations cannot wait much longer before acting. The United States has not committed itself to seeking a second U.N. resolution authorizing military action, but Powell's speech was designed to test the waters for whether it was possible to win approval for such a measure.
Powell may have picked up support from some of the smaller countries on the council. In the meetings with Powell, Angola was very supportive of the U.S. position, while Guinea said there were "no big gaps" between it and the United States, a U.S. official said. Spain, Bulgaria and Chile -- along with Britain, the closest U.S. ally -- also expressed support for a tough line on Iraq.
"We'll see what happens after the inspectors come back from Baghdad," Powell told reporters before departing for Washington. The chief weapons inspectors are scheduled to travel to the Iraqi capital this weekend in an effort to seek more cooperation, and are due to report to the council again Feb. 14.
Powell is held in high esteem abroad, partly because of the perception that he is a reluctant warrior in an administration filled with hawks. Today, he used that reputation to bolster the administration's case. With CIA Director George J. Tenet seated behind him, Powell frequently emphasized that the facts he was presenting were his own conclusions from reviewing the intelligence.
Using large screens erected in the chamber, Powell displayed photographs, diagrams and translations from intercepts, moving quickly from the images and sounds to a detailed explanation of their meaning.
In one theatrical touch, he held up a vial with a teaspoon of simulated anthrax provided by the CIA. Less than a teaspoon of anthrax in an envelope, he noted, caused havoc in the U.S. postal system in 2001, and Iraq has not accounted for as much as 16,500 liters of anthrax, enough to "fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons."
A senior State Department official said that Powell spent Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at CIA headquarters in Virginia, which is only minutes from Powell's home in McLean. He reviewed slides and transcripts and closely questioned photo and other intelligence analysts to understand how they reached their conclusions. Some pieces of intelligence were withheld to not compromise the sources of the information or the means by which it was gathered, the official said. Powell rejected some information if he felt it was too difficult for nonexperts to understand.
The official said Powell hoped to win over his audience by the wealth of information, saying he wanted to win like the 1963 Dodgers rather than the 1927 Yankees. "We hit a series of line drives, rather than go for a big out-of-the-park home run."
One senior council diplomat said Powell had delivered a skillful presentation of the risks posed by Iraq's weapons program. But he said that key elements, particularly the communications between Iraqi officials allegedly trying to hide nerve agents and mobile biological weapons facilities, were less convincing.
Syria, the Security Council's only Arab nation, said that there was nothing in Powell's remarks that would justify military action against Iraq. Syria's U.N. ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, faulted the administration for creating a media spectacle in the council.
Powell said that intelligence sources had described an elaborate system of Iraqi concealment, replacing computer hard drives at weapons sites, and moving documents, computers and banned weapons around the country. He showed satellite photographs allegedly showing chemical weapons bunkers and convoys of Iraqi cargo trucks preparing to move ballistic missile components from a missile facility two days before inspections resumed. "We saw this kind of housecleaning at close to 30 sites," he said.
He acknowledged differences between the United States and the IAEA over the threat posed by Iraq's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. But he said "there is no doubt in my mind" that Iraq is seeking the ability to produce fissile nuclear fuel.
He also detailed new intelligence alleging that Iraq has been harboring the Baghdad cell of a global terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, whom he described as an associate of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
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Work on New Drones, Missiles Called Example of 'Persistence'
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31968-2003Feb5?language=printer
Describing Iraqi efforts to develop missiles and aircraft for delivering chemical or biological warfare agents, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made two new allegations. He disclosed that Iraq had flight-tested a drone that could fly 310 miles. And he asserted that Iraq was attempting to build a liquid-fueled ballistic missile with a range of 745 miles.
The rest of Powell's remarks about Iraqi missile and drone development echoed what U.S. and British intelligence analysts have reported in recent months, according to defense specialists. But mention of the drone was especially intriguing to experts, who said it represented a significant advance for Iraq and appeared to provide concrete evidence of the potential danger Iraq poses to its neighbors.
"This is the kind of thing that Iraq could use to attack Israel with," said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons proliferation specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It is a very effective example of the persistence of Iraq's efforts."
Iraq's work on ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, is important to the administration's case that Iraq constitutes a threat to its neighbors and potentially to nations far beyond its borders. By all accounts, Iraq still lacks a delivery system that can reach beyond Iran, Turkey, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. But U.S. officials have been concerned about Iraq's determined pursuit of longer-range UAVs and its ability to rebuild missile-producing facilities bombed by U.S. warplanes.
The development of an effective drone would appear to present the most immediate threat, analysts said. Although much less sophisticated than ballistic missiles, UAVs offer the most efficient way to disseminate chemical or biological weapons over large, distant areas.
Powell's discussion of Iraq's experimentation with UAVs began with previously cited evidence -- attempts over the past decade to design drones by modifying two manned aircraft, the Russian-made MiG-21 and the Czech-made L-29, a light trainer jet. But Powell then reported that Iraq had moved away from these attempts and focused more recently on developing smaller UAVs. He showed a photograph of one provided by U.N. inspectors.
He also produced U.S. intelligence collected on June 27 that he said "graphically and indisputably demonstrated" Iraq had lied about the range of its UAVs. In its Dec. 7 declaration to the U.N. Security Council, Iraq listed drones with ranges limited to 50 miles. But Powell said the United States had detected "one of Iraq's newest UAVs" performing a test flight that went 310 miles "un-refueled and on autopilot."
He displayed an aerial photo of the Samarra East airfield where the flight took place. On the photo was drawn a racetrack pattern, eight miles long and five miles wide, that Powell said the UAV had flown.
"That was a nice graphic, and the most up-to-date information that the government had released on the subject of Iraq and UAVs," Cirincione said.
On Iraqi missiles, Powell cited "numerous intelligence reports over the past decade from sources inside Iraq" indicating that Iraq has managed to hide "up to a few dozen" variants of the Scud missile used during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, with ranges of about 400 to 560 miles. He also repeated earlier intelligence findings that Iraq had violated a U.N.-imposed, 93-mile limit on the ranges of two missiles, which he identified as Al Samoud 2 and Al Fatah. The reference to Al Fatah puzzled some experts, who said that no weapon by that name is listed in published intelligence reports about Iraqi missiles. The other short-range missile in addition to Al Samoud 2 cited in those reports is Al Ababil.
Powell mentioned evidence reported by U.N. weapons inspectors that Iraq had imported 380 SA-2 rocket engines -- some as recently as December -- for extending the range of Al Samoud missiles. He echoed previous assertions by U.S. and British intelligence officials that Iraq was trying to produce even more powerful missiles, with ranges in excess of 600 miles.
But he went further by citing a liquid-fueled missile that some U.S. analysts believe Iraq is designing to fly 745 miles. Defense officials said this was a reference to a program that Iraq began in the late 1980s, but was set back by U.S. airstrikes in December 1998.
As evidence, Powell showed a picture of a new test stand at the Al Rafah Liquid Engine Test Facility. The stand, Powell noted, has an exhaust vent five times longer than an older stand nearby that was used for testing the shorter-range Al Samoud. Similar photos have appeared in previous published U.S. and British intelligence reports.
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Despite Defectors' Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31744-2003Feb5?language=printer
U.N. officials have suspected since the late 1990s that Iraq possesses mobile bioweapons facilities, some disguised as ordinary trucks to shield them from U.N. inspectors and spy satellites. But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday reached into the U.S. intelligence dossier and disclosed for the first time significant details of what he called "biological weapons factories on wheels."
"These are sophisticated facilities," Powell said, referring to diagrams purportedly showing the interior of one such lab. "They can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."
At least seven of the mobile labs are on trucks or in rail cars in Iraq, and all were deliberately designed for stealth, Powell said. But lacking photos or other hard evidence, he based the claim on reports by at least four human sources -- defectors or other "eyewitnesses."
The descriptions of the facilities were sufficiently detailed that several independent weapons experts said the existence of such facilities was plausible, though some of the points in Powell's presentation drew skepticism. The truck-mounted biological weapons labs were not captured on camera but were presented in artists' renderings.
"It was the strongest case the administration has made that there has been significant biological weapons production since 1998," when the previous round of U.N. weapons inspections ended, said Jonathan Tucker, a former weapons inspector and currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "But the sources apparently were defectors, who have not always been reliable or credible. . . . I would be more comfortable if there were photos."
The mobile labs were the highlight of a presentation on biological weapons that otherwise yielded little new information.
The rest of Powell's report focused on much-debated discrepancies in Iraq's accounting for munitions and materials it produced before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Powell criticized Iraq, for example, for failing to account for hundreds of 400-pound bombs that it has admitted filling with anthrax bacteria.
"The Iraqis never accounted for all the biological weapons they had admitted they had, and we know that they had," Powell said. Noting that a single teaspoon of dry anthrax spores shut down the Capitol in October 2001, he said Iraq had the capacity to "fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons."
The mobile labs depicted in Powell's diagrams could potentially enhance that capability, according to weapons experts who reviewed the evidence. The drawings showed an assembly line for bioweapons -- starting with the growth of large quantities of cells to the drying and refining of lethal spores for bombs -- fitted into three tractor-trailers of average size.
A key intelligence source, described as an Iraqi chemical engineer, helped supervise one of the labs and knew intimate details of the project, Powell said. For example, Powell added, Iraqi scientists would often begin producing pathogens on Thursday nights and complete the process on Fridays, believing that U.N. officials were unlikely to conduct inspections on the Muslim holy day, Powell said.
But such anecdotes did not ring true with some weapons experts. Raymond Zilinskas, a microbiologist and former U.N. weapons inspector, said a 24-hour production cycle was insufficient for creating significant amounts of pathogens such as anthrax. "You normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation," said Zilinskas, director of Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "The short processing time seems suspicious to me."
Zilinskas and other experts said the schematic presented by Powell as an example of Iraq's mobile labs was theoretically workable but that turning the diagram into a functioning laboratory posed enormous challenges -- such as how to dispose of large quantities of highly toxic waste.
"The only reason you would have mobile labs is to avoid inspectors, because everything about them is difficult," Zilinskas said.
"We know it is possible to build them -- the United States developed mobile production plants, including one designed for an airplane -- but it's a big hassle. That's why this strikes me as a bit far-fetched."
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Data on Efforts to Hide Arms Called 'Strong Suit' of Speech
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 6, 2003; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32595-2003Feb5?language=printer
To trick U.N. weapons inspectors, Iraqi authorities hauled away prohibited materials, bulldozed weapons sites and intimidated Iraqi weapons experts -- in one case ordering a dozen scientists confined to a guesthouse, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the U.N. Security Council today in illustrating what he called "a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years."
Powell made a series of new allegations about Iraqi behavior, at times linking President Saddam Hussein to specific tactics intended to defy U.N. weapons inspectors. He said that in one case Hussein ordered a death certificate issued for a scientist who was then sent into hiding. In another, Hussein ordered a warning be sent to Iraqi scientists that cooperation with the inspectors would be punishable by death, Powell said.
One of Powell's most dramatic new charges was that the Iraqi military distributed rocket-launchers and warheads filled with biological agents in western Iraq, where they were hidden in palm groves. Citing "human sources," he said orders were given to move the weapons every one to four weeks to prevent discovery. The Iraqi government denies it has any biological or chemical weapons.
Outside analysts said the credibility of Powell's case requires faith in U.S. interpretations of satellite photographs and intercepted conversations between Iraqi officials, as well as significant trust in the unidentified informants cited frequently by the secreatary.
But these experts put special significance on the newly released satellite photographs said to show deceptive activity at alleged weapons sites, noting that previous inspection teams uncovered similar efforts to hide or remove evidence. The intercepted telephone conversations were suggestive, they said, but not decisive.
The evidence of Hussein's deception was the "strong suit" in Powell's presentation, said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. "He really presented an overwhelming case. There have been numerous examples in the past of Iraqis cleaning out inspection sites."
Powell displayed a satellite image of a truck caravan at a facility he said was related to germ warfare. He said the image, taken two days before U.N. inspections resumed, revealed activity at a regularly monitored site where such movement is rare.
A photograph taken the same day showed five cargo trucks and a crane at a missile facility, which Powell described as evidence that Iraq intended to move the missiles out of the range of inspectors. A third image, he said, showed a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components. By Powell's account, another showed special vehicles and chemicals being taken away from a chemical weapons facility before inspectors arrived on Dec. 22.
Powell said U.S. analysts saw "this kind of housecleaning" at 30 sites, although he acknowledged that they did not know what Iraq was moving at all of those sites. He also reported that computer hard drives had been inexplicably replaced at Iraqi weapons facilities and said that Hussein's son Qusay ordered the removal of banned weapons from his father's many palaces.
The amount of deduction in some of Powell's examples, some analysts said, detracted from the overall strength of his argument. "I love imagery," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, "but I don't know what I saw."
But David Kay, the former chief U.N. nuclear inspector in Iraq, said Powell had effectively woven together information from human sources and intercepts.
In one conversation, an Iraqi general tells a subordinate to make sure a "modified vehicle" from the Al-Kindi factory in Mosul is removed before inspectors arrive the next day.
The conversation rings true, Kay said, because inspectors learned of a very similar exchange that preceded a visit to a facility in September 1991. The Iraqis failed to removed critical evidence in that case, however, leaving inspectors with a bonanza of documents on Iraq's nuclear program.
"My initial reaction was Yogi Berra's 'deja vu all over again,' " Kay said.
Arguing that Iraq has engaged in "a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work," Powell said that "many sources" corroborated information that Hussein participated directly in the effort to prevent inspectors from interviewing Iraqi weapons scientists. He said Hussein decreed that any scientist who agreed to leave Iraq to meet inspectors would be treated as a spy.
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Powell offers 'irrefutable' arms proof
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 6, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030206-50736184.htm
NEW YORK - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday provided intelligence photographs, audiotapes and a raft of other evidence in an attempt to convince a skeptical U.N. Security Council that Iraq is still developing weapons of mass destruction, in violation of U.N. resolutions.
Mr. Powell enumerated Baghdad's efforts to sanitize chemical arms storage bunkers, weaponize biological poisons, muzzle scientists with threats and detainment and brew weapons in mobile labs mounted inside trucks and rail cars.
"I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations" to disarm, he said in a 78-minute address illustrated with visual aids. "I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable. Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441."
Mr. Powell, citing new intellgence details, also sought to establish a link between Iraq and terror network al Qaeda.
As he made public a flood of information assembled through electronic means and defectors, CIA Director George J. Tenet and John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, closely observed the proceedings sitting behind him.
The intelligence is based on "sources, solid sources," Mr. Powell said.
He said members of a group affiliated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has had contacts with al Qaeda, have been operating freely in Baghdad for eight months.
A senior defector, one of Saddam Hussein's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says the Iraqi leader sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al Qaeda members on document forgery, according to Mr. Powell.
"From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al Qaeda organization," he said.
France, Russia and China, all armed with a veto in the council, continued to show a deep reluctance to support the tough U.S. stance against Iraq.
Few of the dozen foreign ministers who had gathered at the United Nations - most for the second time in less than two weeks - departed from scripts that had been written, translated and photocopied before Mr. Powell spoke.
But the leaders of 10 Central and Eastern European countries issued a statement in support of the U.S. posture, similar to an opinion article by eight European heads of state and government that appeared in U.S. and European newspapers less than a week ago.
Mr. Powell attempted to build a convincing case against Baghdad and tried to show that complicity in its pattern of lies and evasions goes all the way to Saddam and includes high-ranking military figures and a vast intelligence network.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," he said.
"What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraq's behavior ... demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort, no effort to disarm as required by the international community."
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed al-Douri, rejected Mr. Powell's presentation as "untruthful allegation."
But many council nations took the presentation as confirmation of the need for further work by U.N. weapons inspectors, whose chiefs - Hans Blix of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency - return to Baghdad this weekend.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, one of the most vocal opponents of war with Iraq, advocated beefing up the international effort.
"Let us double, let us triple the number of inspectors. Let us open more regional offices," he said yesterday. "Could we not, for example, set up a specialized body to keep under surveillance the sites and areas that have already been inspected? Let us very significantly reinforce the capacity for monitoring and collecting information in Iraq."
He thanked Mr. Powell for the presentation but noted that "no trace of chemical or biological agents has been detected by inspectors."
Asked later if he found any portion of the presentation compelling or credible, Mr. Villepin indicated that he was not convinced.
"In this matter, it is very difficult to have absolute proof," he told reporters. "We cannot base our opinions on suspicions, but need facts."
Even before Mr. Powell spoke, there were signs of a shift in opinion within the European Union, which has been divided on how to deal with Iraq. A statement issued by Greece, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said Resolution 1441 "gave Iraq a final opportunity to disarm peacefully. If it does not take this chance it will carry the responsibility for all the consequences."
There also were reports of growing pressure on France and Germany to drop their objections on a support role for NATO in any war in the Persian Gulf.
But Germany remained closely aligned with the French position yesterday, while British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio expressed confidence in the material presented by Mr. Powell.
All council members urged more cooperation from Baghdad on the weapons inspections, and most repeated pleas to let the inspectors complete their tasks.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov refused to comment on the presentation.
"The information given to us today definitely will require serious and thorough study," he said. "Experts in our countries must immediately get down to analyzing it and drawing the appropriate conclusions from it." He said it also must be handed over to the inspectors for "direct, on-site verification."
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, in a brief note, also advocated letting the inspectors work for as long as they deem it productive.
"Security Council members should decide together what to do next on the basis of inspections," he said. "As long as there is still the slightest hope for political settlement, we must pursue that."
With none of the foreign officials budging publicly from their prepared remarks, U.S. officials expressed hope that a marathon series of brief one-on-one meetings with Mr. Powell could help sway some of the ministers.
Mr. al-Douri repeated Baghdad's assertion that it has no weapons of mass destruction.
"The presentation was composed of unverifiable voice recordings, untruthful allegation, unnamed and unknown sources, imaginative diagrams and presumptions," he said.
"Programs of weapons of mass destruction are not an aspirin pill that can be easily hidden but rather require huge production facilities."
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Classified data make case
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 6, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030206-72170710.htm
U.S. intelligence intercepts on Iraq's efforts to hide banned weapons from the United Nations were the highlight yesterday of new information made public to bolster the Bush administration's case for military action to disarm Saddam Hussein.
In an extraordinary public display of intelligence data, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council highly classified communications intercepts, along with satellite photos of weapons facilities and information from defectors of Saddam's regime.
Mr. Powell also disclosed new intelligence details showing Iraq's support for al Qaeda terrorists, including a key figure who was involved in the recent murder of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan.
The intelligence made public is based on "sources, solid sources," Mr. Powell said during a meeting before a session of the U.N. Security Council in New York. CIA Director George J. Tenet sat behind Mr. Powell during the 83-minute briefing.
The information shows Iraq is in "further material breach" of U.N. Resolution 1441, which was unanimously passed by the Security Council in November. The resolution calls on Baghdad to disarm or face military action.
One key communications intercept revealed by Mr. Powell involved a conversation between an Iraqi colonel and a "Capt. Ibrahim" within the 2nd Corps of the Iraqi Republican Guard. The intercept showed how the officers discussed removing "the expression ... 'nerve agent' ... whenever it comes up ... in wireless communications."
Mr. Powell said the conversation showed "the senior officer is concerned that somebody might be listening."
"Well, somebody was," he said, noting that U.S. intelligence estimates Iraq has stockpiled between 100 tons and 500 tons of chemical weapons.
Mr. Powell also presented detailed intelligence showing an Iraqi government connection to international terrorists, including the al Qaeda network and Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants," said Mr. Powell.
Al-Zarqawi ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan until the Taliban regime was ousted in November 2001. He recently "helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp ... located in northeastern Iraq," Mr. Powell said, providing the world body with a satellite photo of the camp.
"The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons," he said.
Al-Zarqawi also was treated in Baghdad for wounds suffered in Afghanistan, and while he was in Iraq, some two dozen al Qaeda operatives set up a base of operations in that country starting in May, said Mr. Powell.
"These al Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months," said Mr. Powell.
He also revealed that al Qaeda associates have been in regular contact with al-Zarqawi and had described Iraq as a "good place" for terrorist groups to maneuver.
Mr. Powell revealed that the murder in Jordan last year of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley was carried out by al Qaeda terrorists using funds and weapons provided by al-Zarqawi.
The electronic intercepts were the most dramatic evidence of Iraqi efforts to evade and deceive U.N. weapons inspectors.
One audiotape, gathered by the U.S. National Security Agency, recorded two Iraqi officers discussing the upcoming visit of Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"We have modified this vehicle," one Iraqi official says in the intercepted message. "What do we say if one of [the inspectors] sees it?"
The Iraqis then discuss the activities of the Al-Kindi Co., an Iraqi firm that Mr. Powell said is involved in Iraq's banned weapons programs.
The two Iraqis then have the following recorded exchange: "I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried you all have something left," one official says.
"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left," the other official states.
The exchange recorded on Nov. 26 - one day prior to weapons inspectors entering Iraq - was used by Mr. Powell to show that Saddam is not cooperating with the latest round of U.N. inspections.
A second intercept on Jan. 30 overhears an Iraqi Republican Guard officer at his headquarters discussing with a field officer the visit of inspectors to search a site for banned weapons.
"Yes," the headquarters officer says. "And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there. Remember the first message - evacuate it."
The use of electronic intercepts is rare and the disclosure was opposed by some officials in the CIA and NSA, U.S. officials said. The disclosure could jeopardize further gathering of such intercepts if the Iraqis take steps to prevent their communications from being overheard, such as using communications equipment with scramblers.
Mr. Powell told the Security Council during yesterday's presentation that the intercepts reveal Iraq's "policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime."
Saddam's chemical arsenal could fill at least 16,000 rockets that could cause mass casualties in an area five times the size of Manhattan, said Mr. Powell.
"And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them," Mr. Powell said. "He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them."
Mr. Powell also revealed that Iraq has set up 18 truck-mounted "biological-agent factories" that can be used to make anthrax and ricin weapons. The trucks are designed to be hard to find, Mr. Powell said.
Additionally, the Iraqis have worked on dozens of biological weapons including poisons that cause gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera, camel pox, hemorrhagic fever and smallpox.
"Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day," said Mr. Powell.
Mr. Powell also documented Saddam's arsenal of chemical weapons. He said the Iraqis were shown to have produced tons of the deadly nerve agent VX, and a satellite photo from May showed weapons activity at a chemical-arms factory known as Al-Musayyib. The chemical weapons at the plant were confirmed by a human agent, said Mr. Powell.
On nuclear arms, Mr. Powell stated that an Iraqi defector revealed in 1995 that Saddam initiated a crash program to build a nuclear bomb. The focus toward building nuclear weapons has been to make or acquire enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb.
A key element of Baghdad's nuclear weapons drive has been to buy special aluminum tubes used in centrifuges that can enrich uranium, Mr. Powell said, showing photographs of the tubes.
Most experts believe the tubes will be used for making nuclear weapons, but some believe they are for missiles, he said.
Mr. Powell also said that information existed that showed that steps were taken by Saddam's officials to remove banned weapons from the dictator's presidential palaces, as well as hiding them in private homes. He also said that files on weapons programs were placed into cars that were driven around the country by Iraqi agents to avoid being discovered by inspectors.
Also, a satellite photograph of Taji, a suburb north of Baghdad, showed 15 chemical-weapons bunkers, including four sites that are "active," Mr. Powell said.
He also suggested that Iraqi intelligence had learned in advance that U.N. weapons inspectors were planning to visit the Taji site and may have succeeded in planting agents inside the weapons-inspections teams.
Mr. Powell said U.S. intelligence discovered that the Iraqis began hiding missile components and biological weapons goods shortly before U.N. weapons inspectors were to search the facilities.
Mr. Powell also revealed the links between Iraq and the al Qaeda network. He said that members of al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence have met at least eight times since the 1990s. One captured al Qaeda member disclosed that Saddam became more interested in cooperating with al Qaeda after the group bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000.
"Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together, enough so al Qaeda could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents; and enough so that al Qaeda could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Powell said.
Mr. Powell disclosed testimony from a captured senior al Qaeda leader who said bin Laden turned to Iraq for support in acquiring chemical and biological weapons. Baghdad provided poison gas training to al Qaeda operatives between 1997 and 2000, the secretary of state said.
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In Their Words: The Security Council
February 6, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/international/middleeast/06CTEX.html
Following are excerpts from a meeting of the United Nations Security Council yesterday after the address by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, as recorded by Federal News Service Inc. A full transcript is online: nytimes.com/international.
FOREIGN MINISTER TANG JIAXUAN OF CHINA . . . The inspections have been going on for more than two months now. The two agencies have been working very hard and their work deserves our recognition. It is their view that now they are not in a position to draw conclusions, and they suggested continuing with the inspections. We should respect the views of the two agencies and support the continuation of their work.
We hope that the upcoming trip to Iraq by Chairman Blix and Director General ElBaradei on the 8th would yield positive results. The two agencies pointed out not long ago some problems in the inspections. We urge Iraq to adopt a more proactive approach, make further explanations and clarification as soon as possible and cooperate with the inspection process. . . .
It is the universal desire of the international community to see a political settlement to the issue of Iraq within the U.N. framework and avoid any war. This is something the Security Council must attach due importance to. As long as there is still the slightest hope for political settlement, we should exert our utmost effort to achieve that. China is ready to join others in working toward this direction. . . .
FOREIGN MINISTER JACK STRAW OF BRITAIN . . . Three months ago, we united to send Iraq an uncompromising message: Cooperate fully with weapons inspectors or face disarmament by force. After years of Iraqi deception, when resolutions were consistently flouted, Resolution 1441 was a powerful reminder of the importance of international law and of the authority of the Security Council itself. . . .
By Resolution 1441, we strengthened inspections massively. The only missing ingredient was full Iraqi compliance: immediate, full and active cooperation. The truth is, and we all know this, without that full and active cooperation, however strong the inspectors' powers, however good the inspectors, inspections in a country as huge as Iraq could never be sure of finding all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Now, Mr. President, sadly, the inspectors' reports last week and Secretary Powell's presentation today can leave us under no illusions about Saddam Hussein's response. Saddam Hussein holds United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 in the same contempt as all previous resolutions in respect of Iraq. . . .
Paragraph 1 of 1441 said that Saddam was and remained in material breach of Security Council resolutions. Paragraph 4 of 1441 then set two clear tests for a further material breach by Iraq. First, that Iraq must not make false statements or omissions in his declaration. But the Iraqi document submitted to us on the 7th of December, as we've heard from Secretary Powell, was long on repetition but short on fact. It was neither full nor accurate nor complete. And by anyone's definition, it was a false statement. . . .
Paragraph 4 goes on to set a second test for a further material breach, namely, and I quote, "a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and to cooperate fully in the implementation of Resolution 1441."
Following the presentation by the inspectors last week and today's briefing by Secretary Powell, it is clear that Iraq has failed this test. . . .
The United Nations' prewar predecessor, the League of Nations, had the same fine ideals as the United Nations, but the League failed because it could not create actions from its words; it could not back diplomacy with a credible threat, and where necessary, the use of force. So small evils went unchecked. Tyrants became emboldened. Then greater evils were unleashed. At each stage, good men said, "Wait, the evil is not big enough to challenge." Then, before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge. We slipped slowly down a slope, never noticing how far we'd gone until it was too late. Mr. President, we owe it to our history, as well as to our future, not to make the same mistake again.
FOREIGN MINISTER IGOR S. IVANOV OF RUSSIA . . . We are convinced that maintaining the unity of the world community, primarily within the context of the U.N. Security Council, and our concerted action in strict compliance with the United Nations Charter and Security Council resolutions, are the most reliable way to resolve the problem of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq through political means. . . .
The information provided today by the U.S. secretary of state once again convincingly indicates the fact that the activities of the international inspectors in Iraq must be continued. They alone can provide an answer to the question to what extent is Iraq complying with the demands of the Security Council. They alone can help the Security Council work out and adopt carefully balanced, best possible decisions. . . .
Recently, when it comes to the Iraqi settlement, we often hear the phrase that "time is running out." Of course, Resolution 1441 is geared to speedily achieving practical results, but any concrete time frames are absent from it.
The inspectors alone can recommend to the Security Council how much time they need to carry out the tasks entrusted to them.
In this connection, we must not - we cannot rule out the possibility of the Security Council that at some stage it may need to adopt a new resolution and perhaps more than one resolution. . . .
The international community in the 21st century is confronting new global threats and challenges requiring a unified response from all states. A graphic example of this approach was the creation of the broad coalition which is combating the main, the most dangerous threat of our time - international terrorism. It is precisely because of the unity of the world community that initial success has been achieved in combating this scourge. . . . We are just at the beginning of a very difficult battle with terrorism and the information provided by the U.S. secretary of state about the activities of Al Qaeda is further corroboration of this fact. . . .
FOREIGN MINISTER DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN OF FRANCE . . . By unanimously adopting Resolution 1441, we chose to act through the inspections. This policy rests on three fundamental points: a clear objective, on which we cannot compromise, the disarmament of Iraq; a method, a rigorous system of inspections requiring of Iraq active cooperation and which affirms at each stage the central role of the Security Council; a requirement, finally, that of our unity, it gave full force to the message that we unanimously addressed to Baghdad. . . .
Regarding the chemical area, we have indications about a capacity to produce VX and mustard gas. In the biological area, the evidence suggests that there are significant stocks - there is the possible possession of significant stocks of anthrax and botulism toxins, and possibly a production capacity today. The absence of long-range delivery systems reduces the potential threat of these weapons. But we have disturbing indications about the continued determination of Iraq to acquire ballistic missiles with a range exceeding the authorized range of 150 kilometers.
In the nuclear area, we need to fully clarify any attempt by Iraq to acquire aluminum tubes. This is a démarche which is difficult, but it is anchored in Resolution 1441, which we should conduct together. If this approach fails and leads us to an impasse, we will not rule out any option, including, as a last resort, the use of force, as we have said all along. But in this kind of scenario, several responses must be clearly given to all governments and all peoples of the world in order to limit uncertainty. To what extent do the nature and scope of the threat justify use of force? How can we see to it that the considerable risks of this kind of intervention can truly be kept under control? This clearly requires a collective démarche of responsibility by the international community. . . .
For now, the inspections regime, favored by Resolution 1441, must be strengthened, since it has not been completely explored. The use of force can only be a final recourse. Why go to war if there still exists some unused space in Resolution 1441? Consistent with the logic of this resolution, we must move on to a new stage and further strengthen the inspections. Given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to operate on Iraq's part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspection. And this is today what France is pro