Posted on 01/26/2003 7:36:59 PM PST by knak
DOWNING STREET is preparing the ground for the absence of a “smoking gun” in today’s United Nations report, with new Intelligence setting out the lengths President Saddam Hussein has gone to to thwart the inspectors.
Braced for more public hostility towards military action, the security services have passed files to the UN detailing how the inspectors have been obstructed in their search for chemical and biological weapons.
The files set out a range of tactics used by Saddam’s security forces to frustrate the weapons inspectors, including details of how they have been secretly followed, with a special unit established to halt their progress if they were near sensitive sites. The unit has even resorted to staging car crashes to delay the UN convoy.
Another file suggests cracks are beginning to show in the Iraqi regime, with senior officials and Saddam’s family members “selling property and cars and moving assets abroad”.
Ministers hope that the Intelligence will back up Tony Blair’s claims yesterday that Saddam’s failure to co-operate breaches the UN resolution.
The Prime Minister said: “If he fails to co-operate in being honest and he is pursuing a programme of concealment, that is every bit as much a breach as finding, for example, a missile or a chemical agent.”
However, he went on to repeat his belief that the UN will issue another resolution backing war.
Despite the Government’s insistence that Saddam’s regime is concealing weapons of mass destruction, public hostility towards military action shows no sign of abating.
A poll by YouGov for The Sunday Times suggested that opinion is hardening against military action, with only 26 per cent saying Mr Blair had convinced them that the Iraqi dictator was sufficiently dangerous to justify military action, against 68 per cent who said Mr Blair had failed to convince them. Even among Labour supporters, only 40 per cent had been convinced by Mr Blair’s arguments, while 53 per cent had not. Pressure on the Government from its own party will grow this week when a motion is tabled at the first meeting this year of the ruling National Executive Committee. The motion expresses “alarm at the apparent intention of the US to attack Iraq irrespective of whether UN inspectors discover weapons of mass destruction”.
Good to hear.
. Maybe, it also could have been a warning to others, or the guy really was defecting. The thing is that they should have spent some time investigating instead of being in a big hurry to give him back. JMO CD
I've been wondering if that has been the "real" work of the UN inspectors all along this time.
They *know* they'll never be allowed to actually find anything.
So if they were smart, what they'd *really* be watching for this time around is acts of resistance and avoidance by the Iraqis (which by *itself* is a "material breach"). The satellite photos of the Iraqis hastily moving their assets, and long-range photo planes similarly watching, may well have been the *real* "inspections", while the UN guys on the ground just act as a diversion and force Saddam's troops to shuffle the equipment for the cameras.
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