Anglo-American Jets Raid Southern Iraq as Iraqi Opposition Groups Meet in London and UN Presses Baghdad to Provide List of Scientists

15/12/2002| IslamWeb

Anglo-American jets attacked Iraqi targets in Southern Iraq as Saddam's foes met in London to discuss post-Saddam Iraq. UN Weapons inspectors have meanwhile had their busiest day Since they returned to the country last month. Iraq said the U.S. planes attacked civilian targets in the south of the country on Saturday, but the U.S. military said the planes, policing "no-fly zones," had targeted Iraqi air-defense facilities. Iraqi air defense forces have fired at U.S. and British aircrafts more than 470 times and violated the southern no-fly zone on 13 days this year, a U.S. statement said.

In the same period, allied aircraft have responded by striking Iraqi military targets more than 80 times.

Iraq says the air raids often hit civilian sites, killing innocent people. Washington says civilians are never targeted.

BLIX PRESSES BAGHDAD O PROVIDE LIST OF SCIENTISTS LINKED TO WMD PROGRAMME

The United Nations, meanwhile, was pressing Iraq for a list of scientists linked to its chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range missile programs so that U.N. experts can interview them inside or outside the country.

Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix has asked Iraq in writing to name the scientists by the end of December. An Iraqi official has said a list is in the works.

Under a November 8 Security Council resolution, the inspectors have the right to interview in private anyone who might know details of Iraq's weapons programs, if necessary by taking them and their families out of the country.

Some diplomats believe the United States is pushing the issue to provoke a clash between Baghdad and the U.N. arms experts that could provide a pretext for a war on Iraq.

Washington says it will topple Saddam and disarm Iraq by force if it fails to disarm voluntarily.

OPPOSITION MEETS IN LONDON

Saddam's opponents gathered in London for a meeting at which they hoped to bury their differences and map out a future for Iraq in the event the Iraqi leader is toppled.

About 300 delegates attended the gathering on the invitation of a committee of six opposition groups recognized by the United States.

The meeting, which had been postponed three times due to arguments about who should control it, heard calls for a federal Iraq, liberated from Saddam's Ba'ath Party.

The extent to which the Iraqi delegates have support in their homeland is unclear. Saddam has now been in power for 30 years and most of the delegates have been in exile for decades.

Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's special envoy to "free Iraqis," told the conference the United States supported a democratic future for Iraq.

"The Iraqi people will find the U.S. standing with them to make a better future," he said. He added that the United States did not want "Saddamism without Saddam," or another strongman in Iraq.

ANTI-OPPOSITION GROUPS DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE CONFERENCE VENUE

Outside the conference venue, dozens of Iraqi, Arab and Muslim activists staged a demonstration, protesting the conference was part of a campaign for a U.S-led invasion of Iraq.

"Bush and Blair will murder millions of Iraqi for oil," read one placard.

Delegates scoffed at the protest.

"We have full right to ask for foreign help, and we should not be ashamed," said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two groups that controls the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq.

BUSIEST DAY YET

Back in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors pounced on about a dozen sites in Iraq on Saturday in their busiest day yet.

They returned to the Communicable Diseases Control Center in Baghdad, after failing to gain access to some locked rooms there during an inspection on Friday, the Muslims' day of rest.

Senior U.N. and Iraqi officials used their hotline for the first time since the latest round of inspections began to sort out the snag, agreeing to seal the rooms until an inspection could be made.

Another U.N. team spent more than two hours inside an unmarked walled compound in the Baghdad residential area of al-Amiriya, which turned out to house a missile research project.

IAEA NEEDS MONTHS TO ASSESS THE IRAQI DOSSIER

U.S. officials and U.N. diplomats have said a 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq submitted a week ago appears to fall short of the full disclosure demanded by U.N. Resolution 1441.

The resolution says falsehoods or omissions in the document, coupled with any obstruction of the inspections, would be a "material breach" of Iraq's obligations.

The head of International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the United Nations would need a few months to assess the Iraqi dossier.

"By January, we should have a status report which should move us forward," he told Reuters. "We still need a few months before we come to a conclusion on the Iraqi declaration."

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi Kurdish opposition leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani, left, gestures as he answers a question during a news conference with Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, right, leader of the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, in Tehran, Sunday Dec. 8, 2002. Barzani, arrived in Tehran Saturday for talks with Iranian officials. Photos of Iran's late founder of Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Khomeini, top second right, and Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, top second left, are seen on wall. Other photos unidentified. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
- Dec 08 3: