Inspectors Visit Iraqi Factory as London Accuses Saddam of Oppressing His People

02/12/2002| IslamWeb

U.N. inspectors visited alcoholic beverage plants and a factory that once made parts for now-banned missiles, while Britain charged on Monday that Saddam Hussein uses torture, rape and terror to oppress his people. On the fifth day of the renewed search for weapons of mass destruction under a tough U.N. mandate, the inspection team went to a Baghdad factory that made guidance and control systems for Iraq's "stretch Scuds."

Iraq modified Soviet-made Scuds to longer range and used them in the Persian Gulf War. Iraq is prohibited from having such missiles - which have a range of 400 miles - and inspectors presumably wanted to ensure that such work has not resumed.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States is looking for "a full and accurate, complete and credible list" detailing Saddam's weapons programs by a Dec. 8 deadline set by the United Nations.

"Anything less will not be tolerated," Fleischer said Monday. "The president will make clear that the burden of compliance rests with Saddam Hussein."

In London, a top Bush administration official said the United States wants to disarm Iraq without war, but the threat of force is vital to ensure that Saddam's regime realizes its survival is at stake.

"Our only hope ... of achieving the peaceful outcome is if we can confront the Iraqi regime with a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, an independent think-tank.

The inspectors left the missile plant after six hours inside and did not comment to reporters. The plant's deputy director, Brigadier Mohammed Salah, said all went smoothly and the arms experts found nothing.

"We don't engage in this kind of activity," he said.

A second team said to be from the U.N. nuclear regulatory agency visited three alcoholic beverage plants on Baghdad's outskirts, according to the plants' Iraqi managers. The purpose of the inspection could not immediately be determined. The managers said inspectors also visited the plants in the 1990s and placed tags on some equipment.

"They surprised us with a visit today," said Albert Moussa Younan, manager of one plant. "They did not find anything because we are a company that produces alcoholic beverages."

Surprise has been an important tactic for the inspectors. The Security Council resolution that sent them back after a four-year absence empowered them to go anywhere at any time to determine whether Iraq still is harboring banned weapons.

In separate developments, the U.S. military said allied warplanes bombed an Iraqi air-defense site Monday after coming under anti-aircraft artillery fire while patrolling a northern no-fly zone. The U.S. European Command based in Stuttgart, Germany, said coalition planes were fired on near the northern city of Mosul.

There was no immediate word from Iraqi officials on the strike.

U.S. aircraft also dropped 240,000 leaflets over communications facilities about 100-150 miles southeast of Baghdad. The sites, between the cities of Al Kut and An Nasiriyah, were damaged by U.S. airstrikes Sunday.

Two leaflet messages urged the Iraqi military not to repair the facilities, while a third warned that Iraqi firing on U.S. and British aircraft flying over southern Iraq could trigger more allied attacks.

Earlier, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri complained to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan about Sunday's U.S.-British air raids in southern Iraq. Baghdad says allied bombs hit an oil installation, killing four people and wounding 27.

The U.S. military reported no casualties and said the Sunday strikes targeted Iraqi air defenses.

Sabri, in a letter to Annan, called for U.N. protection to prevent further attacks, saying they violated Security Council resolutions and marked an "escalation of the hostile and terrorist campaign by the United States and Britain."

In London on Monday, the British government accused Baghdad of systematic human rights abuses, charging in a report that Saddam's regime has oppressed ordinary Iraqis through torture, rape and terror.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the report's aim was "to remind the world that the abuses of the Iraqi regime extend far beyond its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in violation of its international obligations."

Amnesty International, however, accused Straw of a "cold and calculated manipulation" of the human rights situation to support his case for a possible war in Iraq.

During inspections Sunday, U.N. experts showed up at a field 20 miles north of Baghdad searching for devices that can spray deadly microbes from the air. U.N. teams in the 1990s determined that such devices were tested at the airfield.

"I was surprised because I wasn't here," said the field's director, Montadhar Radeef Mohammed. "I was also surprised that they didn't allow me to enter until they got permission. I wasn't aware of the visit."

The inspectors routinely seal sites during their searches.

"We are not giving any notice whatsoever and we insist to exercise our full rights," the top nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The United States has threatened to disarm Iraq - alone if necessary - if Baghdad holds back any relevant information or fails to cooperate with the U.N. inspectors.

The U.N. resolution requires that Iraq give up all weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences." The work of previous inspectors in the 1990s after the Gulf War led to the destruction of many tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them, and the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear bomb program.

That inspections regime collapsed in 1998 amid disputes over access to sites and Iraqi complaints that U.S. spies were among the U.N. inspectors. Those inspectors believed they were unable to find and destroy all of Iraq's illegal weapons.

Also Monday, Arab diplomats said the Arab League's secretary-general, Amr Moussa, met with Iraqi opposition leader Omar Boutani over the weekend to discuss the possibility of a U.S. military strike against Iraq.

While in London, Wolfowitz and other administration officials were to meet with Iraqi opposition representatives. Sherif Ali bin al-Hussein of the Iraqi National Congress said the talks would cover the possibility of war with Iraq and any future administration there.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqis look on as the vehicles of U.N. weapons inspectors leave after a visit to an alcohol factory in Khan Bani Sa'ad, 30 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of Baghdad on Monday Dec. 2, 2002. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasse