Blix to define Iraq disarm tasks

Daily Telegraph, Australia | 03.11.03 | Unknown

[kcvl]

Blix to define Iraq disarm tasks

11mar03

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix will give the Security Council a report next week defining the remaining disarmament tasks expected of Iraq.

Blix said that council members had shown "considerable interest" in the report when he met them behind closed doors for three hours today (New York time). Council Resolution 1284, which established the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) three years ago, required Blix to submit a program of work for inspectors in Iraq defining the "key remaining disarmament tasks".

The report is due by March 27, but Blix said he would be ready to submit it "sometime next week".

[MEG33]

This means we're still waiting on the Turks or a new moon.

[anniegetyourgun]

Remaining disarmament tasks? He doesn't even know what they have! In fact, he doesn't even know his ass from his elbow.

[rolling_stone]

Blix should be unemployed right now for failing to do his job.

[kcvl]

Someone on Fox News this morning said that Blix was trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize which would give him $1 million dollars. That is why he is hiding information from us.

[Howlin]

The report is due by March 27

Then he flat out lied on TV a little bit ago.

He said that they had NOT asked him to report back to them at all.

[anniegetyourgun]

He'd be better off buying a lottery ticket.

[Howlin]

I have about had enough.

[anniegetyourgun]

I may need to step away from the computer and television myself.....before I break something.....

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

oh well thank goodness another report.

let me guess it will go something like this mr secretary the iraqis have shown great interest in being cooperative and we feel they are on the verge of being cooperative we just have to hammer out some details on just how cooperative they should be blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah we found some missles and chemical weapons blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah balh blah

[Howlin]

I was just thinking the same thing.

[MEG33]

See# 1 Keep the faith. Many TVs will need to be protected in the coming days!

[justshe]

B.S.!!!!!

Blix is on someone's payroll......besides the U.N.

He absolutely does NOT have a clue!

How the blue blazes can he find something when he doesn't even know what he's looking for.....where to look for it....etc.

I lay this entire fiasco on the U.N. as they are NOT defining the parameters as outlined in Resolution 1441. Instead.....they are allowing Blix to define the parameters. And thus are involved as an accomplice in a questionable act or a crime as it relates to this travesty---in this obfuscation and cover-up by the Iraqi regime.

[Howlin]

Hmmmm.....perhaps Jim Robinson will buy us a decompression chamber. :-)

[gitmo]

This tango with the UN has been very expensive. We have given Iraq time to prepare for invasion, the weather has gotten worse for our troops, Bush has lost political currency, and the rats are massing their own offensive.

Bush should have followed his Afghanistan model. Get in and clean up quickly.

That's assuming we have the military hardware, supplies, and bench strength to pull it off. Slick Willie squandered a lot of military strength.

[kcvl]

Iraq invites Blix as deadline nears
March 11 2003
By Sonni Efron, John Daniszewski
Washington

The United States mounted a last-ditch effort yesterday to win public and diplomatic support for its proposed military action against Iraq. And Iraq countered by inviting the chief UN weapons inspector to Baghdad on March 17, America's proposed deadline for Iraq to disarm or face war.

Major General Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer to the weapons inspectors, did not give a reason for the invitation, but said Iraq still hoped to persuade Hans Blix to certify that the country was not harbouring weapons of mass destruction, removing any "pretext" for war.

There was no word from Dr Blix as to whether he would accept the invitation. A UN spokesman said however: "We are not aware of any Blix visit."

In a brighter spot for the Bush Administration, Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a seat in Parliament on Sunday and could quickly become prime minister, perhaps as soon as this week. This improves the chances that Turkey might allow US troops to use its bases as a staging area for an assault on Iraq from the north.

Mr Erdogan, the country's de facto leader, had advocated the deployment of 62,000 US troops in Turkey but failed to persuade MPs, who bowed to public opinion and rejected the measure.

[kcvl]

Blix 'hid devastating facts on weapons'
By Marcus Warren at the United Nations and David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 11/03/2003)


The White House yesterday demanded that Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, explain why he buried potentially devastating revelations about newly-discovered Iraqi weapons systems in his last written report.

United States officials told reporters that the UN had discovered a new variety of rocket warhead seemingly configured to scatter "bomblets" filled with biological or chemical agents.

Yet, to the apparent dismay of the Bush administration, Mr Blix chose not to raise the discoveries in his oral report.

The Bush administration has also seized on the discovery that Iraq has developed an unmanned aerial drone capable of dispensing chemical and biological weapons, and which may exceed the 93-mile range allowed under UN resolutions. Colin Powell, the secretary of state, said the revelation "should be of concern to everybody".

In what appeared to be a deliberate rebuke for Mr Blix, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, twice said the omission raised questions that the Swedish chief arms inspector needed to answer.

Asked if America feared that Dr Blix deliberately buried the incriminating data, Mr Fleischer said: "There are outstanding questions, and all members of the Security Council, I think it is safe to say, look forward to hearing the answers."

A Western diplomat at the UN even implied that the inspector's omission was not accidental. "This was an attempt, for whatever reason, to bury absolutely key information about Iraq's arsenal," he said. "We want answers from Iraq, but also from Mr Blix."

British and American officials were furious that Mr Blix had failed to mention Iraq's "Project 101" when he addressed the Security Council last Friday.

Details of the scheme suggested Iraq had sought to produce cluster munitions filled with biological and chemical agents to be scattered across battlefields. The project was referred to in the detail of the inspector's written report. The hollow metal balls, and fuses Iraq is known to possess, were ideally suited for dispersing agents across large areas, a US official told the New York Times.

"When these things come out from the main frame and they explode inward, chemical agents come out," he said. "These can be used for biological weapons too."

The UN report, entitled Unresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programmes, concluded that "Iraq's interest in cluster munitions and the developments it did make may have progressed well beyond what it declared". A munition component was discovered at the Al Noaman factory, well known as a centre of production of such weapons, last month, the report said.

It also suggested that gas gangrene was the preferred agent to be used in the device because the substance was most effective when in contact with open wounds. Iraq produced 340 litres of the concentrate in 1990.

The revelation was part of the huge amount of evidence that the United States and Britain now intend to deploy in the campaign to secure support from the Security Council for a new resolution effectively authorising war.

Mr Blix's written report does an eloquent job in indicating the difficulties in pursuing successful inspections, given the huge quantity of information still concealed from the UN by Iraq.

"Unmovic has credible information that the total quantity of BW [biological warfare] agents in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf war was 7,000 litres more than declared," the report said. It dismisses Iraq's claims to have destroyed its stocks of the agent 10 years ago.

[smith288]

We should have just bombed Iraq immediately and went to the UN later and said :Sorry, our bad...but we were right." but nooo we are going into the hot month of April in Iraq with the military twiddling their thumbs.

[kcvl]

Blix may visit Iraq on March 17, says Amin
BAGHDAD, MARCH 9, INA
Iraq said on Sunday chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix might visit Baghdad on March 17.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), also said Iraq believed it had little hope that it could avert a US-led invasion no matter what Iraq did on the disarmament issue.

Asked whether Blix would visit soon, Amin told a news conference in Baghdad: "I don't know really, but he might, he might visit us on the 17th of this month”.

Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for Blix, said: “I am not aware at this point of any official invitation for Mr. Blix to go to Baghdad. And if there were an invitation we would study it to see what would be the purpose of such a visit and what would be gained if anything.”

Asked whether Iraq believed that the US would attack whatever it did on cooperation and disarmament, Amin said: "Yes, we believe that”

“But there is a probability that the situation will be enhanced by the supporting of other states in the Security Council and the people around the world, we are preparing for all probabilities. We are preparing ourselves for war. At the same time we are working to resolve any pending issues with weapons inspectors, he said.

Amin said Iraq was also continuing work to clarify any outstanding disarmament issues regardless of the deadline.

“This issue of seven days, 10 days, does not concern us technical people. We are exerting all our efforts...to complete our work," he said.

Amin said Iraq destroyed six more banned al-Samoud missiles on Sunday, bringing to 46 the total number of missiles scrapped since Blix ordered Baghdad to start eliminating the program as of March 1.

He said the inspectors have carried out 923 inspection of 722 sites since they resumed work last November.

[kcvl]

10.03.2003 06:00 UTC

Iraq receives questions from Blix

Iraqi government officials said on Sunday they had received a catalogue of questions regarding Baghdad's weapons programmes from the United Nations chief arms inspector, Hans Blix. Baghdad's liaison officer with the inspectors, General Hussam Mohammad Amin, told a news conference that his government was doing all it could to comply with UN resolution 1441. General Amin admitted that Bagdad was beginning to view a U.S.-led attack as inevitable.