Posted on 10/01/2002 12:31:35 AM PDT by kattracks
VIENNA, Austria Oct. 1 Gearing up for a return to Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors pressed a delegation from Baghdad for free access to so-called "sensitive sites" where Saddam Hussein might be concealing weapons of mass destruction.
Inspectors preparing for a fresh assessment of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities said Tuesday's second and final day of logistical talks would focus on government complexes and other sites to which Saddam has restricted access in the past.
"We are aiming to restore as much as possible the concept of `any time, any place,'" said Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, where the nuclear inspectors are based and the talks are being held.
Although the Iraqi president last month pledged unconditional access to sites across Iraq, Baghdad since has rejected the notion of new U.N. resolutions that would broaden and toughen the inspection regimen. The Iraqi resistance has thrown into question whether the inspectors would be able to come and go as they please at Saddam's palaces, which have been off-limits to surprise visits since 1998.
The issue of palace inspections and some other contentious matters would require amending the most recent U.N.-Iraq agreement on inspections. While the Vienna talks have touched on those topics, a decision on changing the sanctions regimen would have to be made by the U.N. Security Council once chief inspector Hans Blix reports back on Thursday.
Under a deal U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan cut with Baghdad in early 1998, the inspectors' access to eight presidential sites encompassing a total of about 12 square miles was restricted.
Under the deal, inspectors were not permitted to carry out surprise visits to the sites, which include Saddam's palaces. It also created a team of international diplomats to accompany inspectors when they did enter.
The United States and the rest of the Security Council endorsed that plan, which remains in effect. However, the Bush administration is pushing for a resolution that would eliminate those conditions.
"We're telling the Iraqis we don't want any limitations on our access," said a senior diplomat close to the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The basic mandate is that we have the right to go anywhere, at any time, and to use any means of inspection."
ElBaradei said Monday's first day of talks took place in a "businesslike atmosphere" in which the Iraqis, who made no public statements, "have been positive and coming with a desire to reach an agreement."
The Iraqis were supposed to bring to Vienna a backlog of reports listing items they possess which could have military purposes, and list the locations and current uses of those items. ElBaradei said the Iraqis promised to turn over the records Tuesday.
Blix said the Iraqis and the U.N. experts were nailing down logistics such as where the teams will be based, their accommodations and security, and how samples would be taken out of the country for analysis. If the Security Council formally approves the mission, it could begin by the third week of October.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview on PBS that before inspectors return to Iraq, Blix will have to wait and see whether the Security Council comes up with new guidance or additional resolutions that might require him to modify his plan,
"I'm pleased that he is in that state of readiness and we'll have to see how things develop over the next couple of weeks with respect to a resolution with new requirements," Powell said.
Access to suspect sites will be crucial in any comprehensive assessment of Saddam's arsenal, said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
"We have satellite photographs, but we don't have a presence on the ground," Fleming said. "As weapons inspectors, we need to see what is below the roofs of those buildings that we see from the sky. What is going on in those buildings? We need to talk to the people. We need to see the documents in order to really find out the truth."
Nearly four years ago, inspectors hunting for evidence of weapons of mass destruction withdrew from Iraq on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes amid allegations that Baghdad was not cooperating with the teams.
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, IAEA assessments indicated Saddam was six months away from building an atomic bomb. Inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Over the next six years, inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.
On the Net:
IAEA: http://www.iaea.org
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Actually, even back then, the inspectors didn't find sh*t. Saddam's massive CBW program was only revelead after the defection of his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, director of his "Special Weapons" program.
Here's a backgrounder on how that went down, courtesy of PBS, from a 1999 Frontline documentary:
[Hussein Kamel's defection] added a definite sense of urgency.... Suddenly, Hussein Kamel defects, and it's out there, laid before the world: Iraq is cheating, Iraq is lying, Iraq has not complied, and not complied in a big way. What are you going to do about it?
Now, all the breaks are off. Ekeus said, 'Go,' and we started running, and almost immediately we ran into a brick wall called the United States Government, because the U.S. Government went, You want to do what? When? How?
And what we were talking about was UNSCOM moving out of the realm of just being an assessor of intelligence, to UNSCOM getting actively involved in the collection of intelligence, and using techniques and methodologies that it normally only associated with national governments, not with international organizations, not with a bunch of guys with blue hats and funny sounding names.
Iraq had a big problem on its hands, because it needed a new explanation for [Kamel's revelations]. And the explanation they hit upon was, "We are shocked, shocked, to discover that under our very noses, Kamel all this time has been hiding all kinds of weapons and documentation. We've discovered it on his chicken farm, and here it is. You may have it all."
And they deliver to UNSCOM one million pages of newly-declared documents, which show a lot of biological weapons programs, which show a lot more chemical weapons programs, which show material shortfalls, which show missile stuff, which show nuclear stuff. But -- and it took a long time to do this -- as UNSCOM went through these million pages of documents, and hundreds of crates, they found that there were interesting gaps.
For example, all the biological stuff was described as research. There was nothing on weaponization, that is to say, nothing on taking what you know to be a toxic bug -- anthrax say -- and putting it into a warhead that can be used as a military weapon. That's a big part of the problem. ... So in each case, Iraq kept back something important. Usually the most important thing.
Hussein Kamel's defection tells UNSCOM that not only have they been missing something, but they've been missing a huge, huge amount of what they were supposed to be finding. Way more than they had ever suspected. Their worst nightmare scenario was eclipsed by the documents on this chicken farm, and it meant the beginning of a major new phase of biological, missile, chemical, and nuclear investigations.
The dimensions of [the revelations].... That was surprising. Just like early on after the Gulf War we were shocked at the dimensions of the nuclear program -- we just had no idea of how many different avenues the Iraqis were pursuing to enrich uranium and the like.
So when Hussein Kamel came out with his information, again, it was on a scale that was, quite honestly, larger than people like me thought.
It gave UNSCOM a real lease on life. See, before this defection, there were those who were saying, "There's no reason to do this. You're looking in dry holes," and the rest. And when this came out, people who supported UNSCOM could go, "Look, we told you. More than ever, we now need an intrusive inspection regime. These guys will not fess up voluntarily." So it actually became a very important legitimizing development for UNSCOM.
Before Hussein Kamel's defection, in August of 1995, you write that Saddam was beating the West in some way, and UNSCOM. How?
In 1995, Saddam Hussein actually appeared to be winning in his strategy of cheat and retreat. He had actually managed to hide so many of his weapons that many of the U.N. weapons inspectors thought that he had turned over most of them, and were prepared to make that kind of recommendation. And it was only on the defection of his son-in-law and cousin [Kamel] that the international community realized how much he really still had. The whole crisis actually might have ended at that point, if it hadn't been for that very ... defection. ...
What was revealed in Kamel's defection?
Kamel's defection led to two important disclosures. One was the information he provided Western intelligence agencies. But, secondly, Saddam Hussein knew that he was about to be caught, and so he took weapons inspectors down to Kamel's chicken farm, and said that they'd only just discovered these containers full of documents about weapons of mass destruction. Of course, feigned his own ignorance, and blamed it all on Kamel.
What changed for Saddam after that?
Well, it became apparent that he had hidden an extraordinary amount of material, and from that point on UNSCOM was, again, a going concern.
The quantity was staggering. It took the U.N. weapons inspectors months and months and months just to go through and translate every -- and create a database for what was in those papers. It revealed that Saddam Hussein had also hidden far more than anyone ever realized he had, to begin with. This really was the critical turning point of the entire eight years in trying to deal with Saddam Hussein. It put the U.N. weapons program back on track.
Case in point: the motives of an embassy bomber:
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Michel Moutot Agence France Presse June 4, 2001, Monday NEW YORK, June 4 Owhali's lawyers have already indicated they will make no attempt to justify what their client did, but will instead seek to provide the jury with an explanation of his motives. Should one member of the jury vote against the death penalty, Federal Judge Leonard Sand, presiding over the hearing, must hand down a sentence of life in prison without parole. Opening defense arguments in the penalty phase of the trial, David Baugh, one of Owhali's lawyers, chose to show a video of a 1996 CBS "60 Minutes" documentary on the effects of the US-backed embargo on Iraq.
Throughout the trial opposition to the embargo was presented as a key motivation that drove Owhali and three other followers of the alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to take part in the the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998. Owhali was convicted last week of murder in the Nairobi bombing in which 213 people died, confessing to assisting the driver of the truck carrying the bomb, and then throwing stun grenades at embassy guards to create a diversion before fleeing.
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Entitled "Punishing Saddam," the documentary showed starving babies in Baghdad hospitals, empty shelves in street pharmacies and water-treatment plants unable to function. "It's not Saddam that suffers, it's his people," the CBS journalists commented in response to the images. Baugh then cited the 1950 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in times of war which specifies that infrastructure necessary for the survival of citizens must be protected, specifically drinking water installations. Among witnesses appearing for the defense was Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general during the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s who resigned in protest at the Vietnam War. Clark, a critic of US policy on Iraq, is a controversial figure who has spoken up for the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and for Bosnian-Serb indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. A frequent visitor to Iraq, Clark told the court of his meetings with Iraqi doctors who "tell you how they lose patients every day that they would not lose if they had simple medicine." He said that the often-repeated figure of 250 deaths of children each day in Iraq is "a low number." Concluding his testimony, Clark said that no member of a racial minority -- African-American, Arab or other -- can expect a fair trial in the United States. Judge Sand has indicted that the jury may begin deliberations on Owhali's fate by Friday. A sentencing hearing for Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, of Tanzania -- also convicted of murder last week for his role in the Dar es Salaam bombing -- will follow. The two others convicted in the bombings trial, Lebanese-American Wadih el-Hage, 40, and Jordanian Mohamed Saddiq Odeh, 35, were found guilty of conspiracy and could face life in prison. Judge Sands has yet to rule on their sentences. |
<> Desdemona, if a team of U.N. inspectors desired to tour our weapon sites, you would be among the first to rant and rave above loss of sovereignty.
Our allies are not throwing in in support of attacking Iraq. If Bush decides to back off it is likely the case White House internal political polls are showing the Republicans can regain control of the Senate and keep the House without war with Iraq and damaging our relationships with Europe.
I hope it works out that way. Then, Iraqui Desdemona's and their innocent children will not be part of the death toll attributed to "collateral damage" so "we can rid the world of this Hitler" blah, blah, blah.<>
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