Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
April 10, 1998
Experts Deny Iraq Has Ended Its Germ Warfare Program
> [U] NITED NATIONS -- A team of independent experts who
> reviewed Iraq's progress in eliminating biological
> weapons at Baghdad's request has rejected President
> Saddam Hussein's contention that he no longer has a
> germ warfare program.
>
> The experts' report, released on Thursday, called Iraqi
> disclosures "incomplete and inadequate" and said
> Baghdad had failed to convince them that biological
> weapons or the ingredients to make them have been
> eliminated.
>
> Most disturbing, the report said, were Iraqi claims
> that missile warheads containing biological weapons had
> been destroyed. The Iraqi account, "cannot be
> reconciled with physical evidence," said the report,
> compiled by military and scientific experts from 13
> countries, including the United States, Russia, China
> and France.
>
> The findings are a blow to Iraq, which had demanded the
> independent review in the hope that it would present a
> more positive picture of Iraqi compliance than the
> report by the U.N. Special Commission, the team of arms
> inspectors that was charged with eliminating Iraq's
> weapons of mass destruction after the end of the war in
> the Persian Gulf in 1991.
>
> U.N. inspectors believe that Baghdad could still have
> an active germ warfare program or the ingredients to
> quickly produce extremely lethal biological weapons.
>
> The United Nations had agreed to Iraqi demands for an
> independent review, to be conducted with Iraqi experts
> present, and invited member countries to nominate
> experts for the independent panel. But in this case, as
> in other recent reviews, experts from countries
> friendly to Iraq have instead agreed with the findings
> of other experts from neutral and more critical
> nations.
>
> Iraq and the Security Council are heading into another
> crucial and potentially explosive few weeks,
> culminating in the first major review of sanctions
> against Iraq since Secretary General Kofi Annan
> concluded an agreement with Saddam in February that
> headed off an American military attack.
>
> Iraqi officials have been talking confidently of
> closing the book on sanctions this year. That will
> certainly not happen in Security Council deliberations
> this month, diplomats say.
>
> But diplomats and U.N. officials have not ruled out
> some movement on easing sanctions by the fall, when the
> next major reassessment by the council is to take
> place.
>
> Russia, France and China, which all have potentially
> large commercial interests in Iraq, have argued that
> the embargo cannot last forever. Russian and French
> officials, as well as Annan, have been telling Iraq
> that it must cooperate with inspections to strengthen
> its position.
>
> The recently completed U.N. inspections of eight
> formerly off-limits presidential properties in Iraq,
> made possible by Annan's agreement, are being touted by
> the Iraqis as significant cooperation. A report on
> those inspections will be sent to the Security Council
> next week.
>
> But some serious questions remain about those
> inspections, and these could add to Iraq's problems in
> coming weeks. When Annan signed the pact with Iraq on
> Feb. 23, Iraqi officials suggested that they regarded
> the presidential site inspections as one-time events.
>
> Annan and Richard Butler, the executive chairman of the
> Special Commission, have argued that there were no such
> restrictions on access. U.N. inspectors treated the
> visits to the sites as preliminary inspections and
> anticipated follow-up visits, with less fanfare and
> less notice. If Iraq concludes otherwise, the stage
> would be set for another tense confrontation.
>
> The independent report on biological weapons, sent to
> the Security Council on Wednesday by Butler, was one of
> four ordered in January, when Iraqi defiance of arms
> inspections had reached a crisis. Experts on chemical
> weapons and missiles reached similar conclusions. A
> report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the
> Iraqi nuclear program is also expected to find
> problems.
>
> A comprehensive account of where inspections stand on
> all Iraqi weapons systems that must be eliminated
> before sanctions can be lifted will also go to the
> council next week.
>
> From the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 until
> 1995, Iraq had denied that it possessed biological
> weapons. But in August of 1995 the defection to Jordan
> of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and former arms
> minister, Hussein Kamel, led to the "discovery" of
> damning documents the Iraqis said were found on the
> defector's chicken farm.
>
> Since then, Iraq has said it has made several "full,
> final and complete declarations" about the biological
> program, the last in September 1997. Experts have never
> found them credible.
>
> The independent report, compiled after a meeting of
> Iraqi and foreign experts in Vienna from March 20 to
> 27, reaches the same conclusion. Moreover, the
> independent experts appear to have sensed that Iraq did
> not intend to allow the review to be too rigorous.
>
> The report says that the Iraqi side "did not include
> within its technical team a full range of technical and
> managerial expertise to enable most of the technical
> issues to be fully examined."
>
> Iraqis also did not offer information on either the
> current status of biological weapons programs or state
> conclusively when such projects were terminated if they
> no longer existed. Missing from Iraqi documentation was
> information about the Al-Hazen Institute, a biological
> and chemical research center belonging to one of Iraq's
> numerous intelligence agencies. The Iraqis told the
> foreign experts that the institute had been destroyed
> because it was a failure.
>
> "Current information makes this assertion difficult to
> accept," the report said.
>
> One of the few new pieces of information to emerge in
> the meetings, the report noted, was that Iraq was
> planning to spray the toxin that causes botulism from
> airplanes. Earlier, the Iraqis had said that they had
> planned to use anthrax bacteria.
>
> The report also said the Iraqis could not explain why
> they had purchased viral, fungal and mycotoxin strains
> -- all used in germ warfare. It also called the Iraqi
> account of production of aflatoxins, another
> biologoical agent, "implausible."
--
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