"We've been in places of which you and I are totally unaware. After we're done in Iraq, we'll be taking a detour to North Korea, or heading to Iran, or Syria."
"We've been in places of which you and I are totally unaware. After we're done in Iraq, we'll be taking a detour to North Korea, or heading to Iran, or Syria."
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 01, 2003
Syria, Teheran on U.S. radar?By Sridhar Krishnaswami
New York march 31. Two days after the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, sharply criticised Syria and Iran for complicating American war efforts in Iraq, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has stepped up pressure on the two countries — warning Teheran that it should stop its drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction; and Syria must end its support to terrorism.
In a tough message that came by way of a speech to a pro-Israel lobby, Gen. Powell placed Iran and Syria in the same category with Iraq and warned them of grave consequences should they continue to promote terrorism. Syria, he said, "faces a critical choice'' on whether it continues "direct support for terrorism in the dying days'' of the regime of Saddam Hussein; and Gen. Powell demanded that Iran should stop "its terrorism against Israel''.
Last Friday, the Defence Secretary pointedly warned Syria and Iran for complicating the coalition war objectives in Iraq saying that Damascus was selling military equipment to the Saddam Hussein regime that included night vision goggles; and Iran was inserting or allowing the Badr Brigade comprising anti-regime Iraqi exiles back into the country. But Washington has not said if and how the Badr Brigade has come directly in the way of coalition forces. But Gen. Powell is seen to have gone a step further in bringing in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
The sharp observations against Syria and Iran in recent days have prompted apprehensions here and elsewhere that the U.S. may be getting ready to take on these two countries once the Iraqi conflict is out of the way. The apprehension is that the Bush administration may be intent on picking up additional fights along the borders of Iraq. Washington has been quite insistent that it is aware of clandestine arms shipments to Iraq to assit the Saddam Hussein regime to hang on to power.
Last week the President, George W Bush, is said to have taken up with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the involvement of a Russian firm in arms shipment to Iraq that included an assortment of weapons. The U.S. has been particularly worried that the Russian firm may have supplied jamming equipment for the GPS that could come in the way of precision guided missiles and munitions dropped by U.S. jets over Iraq. Moscow has flatly denied that any arms deal is taking place. Washington and Moscow continue to disagree on this.
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After war in Iraq, Bush to halt nuclear weapons program in Iran
WASHINGTON, Mar 31, 2003 (Knight Ridder Newspapers - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- When war ends in Iraq, the Bush administration will give "extremely high priority" to halting a secret nuclear weapons program in neighboring Iran, a senior administration official said Monday.
John Bolton, the under secretary for arms control, joined National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in warning that the White House sees nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea as imminent threats.
"The estimate we have of how close the Iranians are to production of nuclear weapons grows closer each day," said Bolton, a leading hawk within the administration.
Both Bolton and Rice, in separate speeches to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, suggested that the Bush administration views the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as an initial response to a series of threats. However, neither of them suggested that Washington is pondering military action elsewhere.
President Bush last year tagged Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil" that threatens world order, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has unnerved Iran and North Korea.
Rice defended the Bush administration's constant warnings that rogue regimes are acquiring evermore lethal weapons.
"Sometimes people think we're a little bit 'the-sky-is-falling, the-sky-is-falling' on these regimes that the president called the axis of evil," Rice said. She added, however, that recent evidence shows that "they certainly belong" on the list.
Rice voiced frustration that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hasn't been more aggressive with Iran's nuclear program and suggested the need for shaking up the way weapons monitoring programs function.
"Once we have a better atmosphere after Iraq, one of the things we're going to have to look at is how the world gets itself better organized to deal with issues concerning weapons of mass destruction," Rice said.
In a separate presentation, Bolton said Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons "in a very comprehensive and sophisticated way." A U.N. team of nuclear inspectors that visited Iran Feb. 21-22 found a series of centrifuges to enrich uranium, a process critical to making nuclear weapons material, he said.
"The IAEA was stunned by the sophistication of the Iranian effort," Bolton said.
Bolton did not forecast when the administration believes Iran may be able to process fissile material for nuclear weapons, acknowledging that such estimates often prove inaccurate.
He said U.S. officials now view Iran and North Korea as equivalent threats, even amid evidence that North Korea may be only months from production of nuclear material for weapons.
"In the aftermath of Iraq, dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance as dealing with the North Korean nuclear weapons program," Bolton said.
Bolton said a series of complicated emerging nuclear weapons threats might present themselves "simultaneously" to the White House once the Iraq campaign is over. "This is going to be a substantial challenge," he said.
Concern about North Korea's nuclear intentions soared last October, when U.S. envoys said Pyongyang admitted having a secret nuclear weapons program. Since then, North Korea has pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, an international agreement to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them, and appears on the brink of activating a nuclear facility that could generate enough material to make about a nuclear bomb a month, experts say.
North Korea says its nuclear program is defensive and designed to forestall U.S. attack.
The Bush administration has sought to deal with the crisis through diplomacy, worried that a spark might ignite a war that could kill hundreds of thousands, and perhaps a million, people within days. However, the U.S. government has refused to negotiate one-on-one with North Korea, as Pyongyang has demanded, and instead has said the talks must include other East Asian countries.
Bolton said U.S. officials hope that a decisive toppling of Saddam may give pause to other nations with secret weapons programs and "that some of these states will back off."
Bolton's remarks are the second alert on Iran from the administration in two weeks.
At a hearing March 19, John S. Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, told a Senate panel that Iran's nuclear program is a "bad-and-getting-worse" problem that "would be a profound danger to us."
Iran, which sits above huge deposits of oil and natural gas, announced in September that it intends to develop 6,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity in the next 20 years.
It says its nuclear programs are only for peaceful purposes.
As a result of revelations by Iranian exile groups, however, Iran has acknowledged that it has a sophisticated gas centrifuge enrichment plant in Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran, and a heavy water plant in the nearby town of Arak.
Bolton also named Libya and Syria as nations with active efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. He said Libya is seeking "to obtain facilities critical for a complete nuclear fuel cycle" that would give it material for bombs. Syria, he added, has extensive stockpiles of sarin and VX nerve agent, and is also pursuing biological weapons.
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