Blix noted that comparison of Iraq's declaration and
its previous statements revealed "several cases of
inconsistencies."
He said Iraq provided contradictory information on its
VX nerve agent program, further clouding the U.N.
effort to understand how far Iraq got in placing the
chemical agent in a weapon.
JDG
Full article:
No 'Smoking Guns' So Far, U.N. Is Told
Blix Says Iraq Failed to Provide Enough Data
After briefing the Security Council in closed
session, Mohamed ElBaradei, left, and Hans Blix meet
with Reporters. (Reuters)
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 9 -- Chief U.N. weapons inspector
Hans Blix said today that his investigators had
uncovered no "smoking gun" evidence that Iraq has
resumed its secret weapons programs, but he sharply
criticized Baghdad for failing to adequately respond
to questions about its previous arms programs or to
supply a comprehensive list of Iraqi scientists
engaged in weapons activities.
Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security
Council in a closed meeting today that it will be
impossible to give Iraq a clean bill of health unless
it backs up its claim to have eliminated any previous
programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons.
But the two men also urged the council to be patient,
noting that it could be months before they can provide
a definitive conclusion about whether Iraq has
restarted its weapons programs. "We have now been
there for some two months and been covering the
country in ever wider sweeps and we haven't found any
smoking guns," Blix told reporters before briefing the
council. "We think that the declaration failed to
answer a great many questions."
The inability of the United Nations to obtain
definitive evidence of new weapons activities in Iraq
is complicating U.S. efforts to galvanize
international support for the military overthrow of
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Germany's U.N.
ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, reflecting a widely shared
view among the 15-nation council, said there were
still "no grounds for military action" and that
inspections should be given more time to succeed. A
leading British newspaper reported that Britain is
seeking to persuade Washington to delay the onset of a
war with Iraq until the fall.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoing remarks by
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said today that
Blix and ElBaradei will not be able to provide the
council with a conclusive review of Iraq's efforts
involving banned weapons by the time they are
scheduled to present their first comprehensive
assessment of those activities on Jan. 27. "We are
just in the middle of the process," Blair said. Some
senior U.S. officials had viewed the Jan. 27
presentation as a potential trigger for military
action.
But Powell has played down the importance of the Jan.
27 assessment, saying Wednesday that "it is not
necessarily a D-day for decision-making." Powell said
that the United States could still make a case for
military action against Iraq even if Blix fails to
find hard evidence of arms violations. "You don't
really have to have a smoking gun," he told NBC today.
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there,"
added White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The
problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see
their smoke."
Still, the Bush administration seized on Blix's
criticism of Iraq, insisting that Baghdad's latest
failure to adequately cooperate with the inspectors or
admit it possesses weapons of mass destruction
constitutes a "further material breach" of its
disarmament obligations and strengthens the case for
military action.
"There is still no evidence that Iraq has
fundamentally changed its approach from one of
deception to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming in
meeting the council's demand that it disarm," U.S.
Ambassador John D. Negroponte told the council behind
closed doors. "Iraq's cooperation with inspections to
date has been legalistic and superficial; but it is
far short of the genuine cooperation the council had
demanded."
Senior Iraqi officials today denied that their lengthy
weapons declaration was incomplete. "People who claim
there are omissions in the report . . . are not fully
acquainted with our voluminous declaration or they
lost their way" reading it, Gen. Amir Saadi, Hussein's
chief science adviser, said in Baghdad.
Blix indicated that the pace of inspections in Iraq
would intensify as the inspectors increase their use
of helicopters to conduct unannounced visits,
establish a regional office in the southern city of
Basra, and introduce reconnaissance planes to conduct
high-altitude surveillance over Iraq.
Blix also plans to push Baghdad to make Iraqi
scientists available for interviews without the
presence of Iraqi authorities. But he insisted he
would not "force anybody to go abroad or force them to
defect."
The issue of interviews has been a source of friction
between the United Nations and the United States,
which believes that Iraqi scientists would speak
freely only if they are interviewed abroad.
Blix has recently assured the United States that he
would "use all of his authority" to elicit pertinent
information on Iraq's weapons programs from Iraqi
scientists, according to a senior U.S. official.
Although Blix stopped short of assuring Washington
that he would exercise his right to conduct interviews
abroad, American officials say they are confident he
will do so. One U.S. official said that Washington and
the United Nations are in the "final stages" of
planning to carry out such interviews in Cyprus.
Blix and ElBaradei, who is scheduled to meet with
Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
in Washington on Friday, said that they would travel
to Baghdad on Jan. 19 and demand that Iraq provide a
fuller account of its weapons programs.
"If evidence is not presented which gives a high
degree of assurance, there is no way the inspectors
can close a file by simply invoking a precept that
Iraq cannot prove the negative," Blix said. "I have
not asserted . . . that proscribed items or activities
exist in Iraq, but if they do, Iraq should present
them and then eliminate them in our presence. There is
still time for it."
ElBaradei indicated to the council that he would press
the United States to provide him with additional
evidence to support U.S. and British allegations that
Iraq tried to import uranium from an African supplier
in 1991. In an effort to deflect growing criticism
that it has failed to provide useful intelligence to
the inspectors, Powell told The Washington Post on
Wednesday that Washington has increased
intelligence-sharing with the U.N. inspectors.
While acknowledging that Iraq has provided inspectors
with unfettered access, Blix and ElBaradei delivered
an unexpectedly tough account of Iraq's record of
cooperation.
ElBaradei said that Iraq had so far failed to provide
adequate documentation describing its efforts to
design nuclear weapons and centrifuges used in the
enrichment of uranium.
He also said that 32 tons of a high explosive, HMX,
that can be used to detonate a nuclear explosive, had
disappeared from a facility that had been subject to
U.N. monitoring until 1998, when the inspectors left
Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign.
"Iraq . . . declared that it had blended the . . . 32
tons with sulfur and turned them into 45.6 tons of
industrial explosive used mainly to cement plants for
mining."
ElBaradei said that a preliminary investigation of
Iraq's unsuccessful attempts to acquire large
quantities of aluminum tubes yielded no evidence to
support suspicions by some U.S. and British
intelligence analysts that it may have been destined
for a secret program to manufacture centrifuges.
"While the matter is still under investigation,"
ElBaradei told the council, "the IAEA'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. While
it would be possible to modify such tubes for the
manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly
suitable for it."
Blix added to the criticism, faulting Iraq for failing
to answer questions about its production of chemical
and biological weapons in a 12,000-page declaration to
the council last month.
He said the declaration "is rich in volume but poor in
new information about weapons issues and practically
devoid of new evidence on such issues." Said Blix, "In
order to create confidence that it has no more weapons
of mass destruction or proscribed activities relating
to such weapons, Iraq must provide credible evidence."
Blix noted that comparison of Iraq's declaration and
its previous statements revealed "several cases of
inconsistencies."
He said Iraq provided contradictory information on its
VX nerve agent program, further clouding the U.N.
effort to understand how far Iraq got in placing the
chemical agent in a weapon.
He noted that Baghdad has failed to provide a
convincing explanation for Iraq's illegal acquisition
of "a relatively large number of missile engines" and
other raw material used to produce solid missile fuel.
� 2003 The Washington Post Company
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"First... to clarify what we stand for: the United States must defend liberty and
justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No
nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them."
-US National Security Strategy 2002
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