U.N. SEES 500,000 IRAQI CASUALTIES AT START OF WAR Irwin Arieff, Reuters, 1/7/03
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&ncid=564&e=2&u=/nm/2003 0107/ts_nm/iraq_un_casualties_dc_1 UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - As many as half a million Iraqis could require medical treatment as a result of serious injuries suffered in the early stages of a war on Iraq, U.N. emergency planners said in a document disclosed Tuesday. The total includes some 100,000 expected to be injured as a direct result of combat and a further 400,000 wounded as an indirect result of the devastation, according to estimates prepared by the World Health Organization, the document said. The confidential U.N. assessment was drafted a month ago but an edited version was posted Tuesday on the Web site of a British group opposed to sanctions on Iraq (http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/undocs/war021210.pdf)... "The resultant devastation would undoubtedly be great," the U.N. planners concluded. The estimates were based on material from several different U.N. organizations. U.N. officials had previously disclosed that as many as 4.5 million to 9.5 million of Iraq's 26.5 million people could quickly need outside food to survive once an attack began. War would also produce a huge refugee problem, driving some 900,000 Iraqis into neighboring countries, with about 100,000 of those requiring immediate assistance as soon as they arrived, according to the U.N. estimate. -------------- Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited by Bush By MICHAEL R. GORDON NY Times January 10, 2003 WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — The key piece of evidence that President Bush hascited as proof that Saddam Hussein has sought to revive his program to make nuclear weapons was challenged today by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Bush cited Iraq's attempts to buy special aluminum tubes as proof that Baghdad was seeking to construct a centrifuge network system to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon," Mr. Bush said. But Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., offered a sharply different assessment in a report to the United Nations Security Council today. Dr. ElBaradei said Iraqi officials had claimed that they sought the tubes to make 81-millimeter rockets. Dr. ElBaradei indicated that he thought the Iraqi claim was credible. "While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the I.A.E.A.'s analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets," the agency said in its report. "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it." While the discussion of Iraq's procurement efforts is highly technical, it is politically very significant. The primary rational for going to war with Iraq rests on fears that Baghdad is striving to develop a nuclear weapon. The argument for military intervention, in effect, is that Iraq was much closer to a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf war than most experts thought and might be again. United States officials have long been concerned that Iraq would try to revive its nuclear weapons program and have cited several pieces of evidence. First, after the 1991 gulf war United Nations inspectors learned that Iraq had planned to build a centrifuge plant of 1,000 machines. Second, British intelligence has reported that Iraq wanted to produce a special magnet that would be suitable for a gas centrifuge system. Another important indicator, officials said, was Iraq's efforts to procure special aluminum tubes. In a report titled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," the White House asserted that Iraq had sought to buy thousands of tubes over a 14-month period to make centrifuges for enriching uranium. Though the shipments were blocked, officials said, the White House said they demonstrated that Iraq was striving to become a nuclear power. Still, American intelligence was never of a single mind on the question of aluminum tubes. While there have been varying assessments, the dominant view among American intelligence analysts — one backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency — is that the precise dimensions and specifications of the tubes indicated that they were intended for use in making centrifuges. But some officials in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department have questioned this analysis, saying that the tubes might be intended to make rockets. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have taken the position that the C.I.A.'s case is compelling. Senior officials said that some of the tubes sought were of a type used to make centrifuges and carried technical specifications that made it difficult to think they could be used for anything else. Asked about the new assessment, a senior Bush Administration official said: "I think the Iraqis are spinning the I.A.E.A. The majority of the intelligence community has the same view as before." The agency, however, is not alone in questioning the United States view. In its report on Iraq's efforts to make weapons of mass destruction, Britain concluded that Iraq was "almost certainly" seeking the means to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But referring to Iraq's attempts to buy aluminum tubes Britain also concluded that "there is no definitive intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear program." Today's assessment also raises new questions. The I.A.E.A. said that Iraq had offered only limited cooperation and that there were still important questions about its suspected effort to develop a nuclear program. But the agency also noted that the presence of its inspectors would make it hard for Iraq to resume its nuclear program. To investigate the case of the aluminum tubes, Dr. ElBaradei said, inspectors visited Iraqi rocket factories, interviewed Iraqi officials, took samples of aluminum tubes that Iraq managed to buy, and reviewed Iraqi documents on purchases they had sought to carry out. Iraq's attempts to buy aluminum tubes "was the key piece of evidence to support the assessment that Iraq was pursuing or trying to revive its gas centrifuge program," said Gary Samore, director of studies for the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the senior proliferation official on President Clinton's National Security Council. As a result of the agency's report, he added, "this particular piece of evidence is now much more ambiguous."
