U.N. Hunts for Arms as U.S. Assails Iraq

17/12/2002| IslamWeb

U.N. inspectors fanned out across Iraq on Tuesday to search for banned weapons after Washington found fault with an Iraqi arms disclosure and vowed to give Baghdad no second chances. Iraqi officials said nuclear, biological and chemical experts set out at dawn from Baghdad for Mosul, nearly 250 miles north, and Radwan, in the Abu Ghuraib area, about nine miles west.

The United States and its ally Britain have signaled they are ready for war if Iraq breaches a tough U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ensuring it has no weapons of mass destruction.

The inspectors have so far reported nothing untoward since they returned to Iraq last month after a four-year absence.

Secretary of State Colin Powell  said on Monday that Washington would this week deliver its final verdict on the disclosures in documents that Iraq handed over to the United Nations on Dec. 7.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Monday that Baghdad would get no second chance. Iraq denies having weapons of mass destruction and experts have been comparing the dossier with previous intelligence.

British officials were quoted as saying they were "very disappointed" by Baghdad's 12,000-page dossier. U.N. officials have said Iraq's declaration failed to account for all of its chemical and biological agents.

"We said at the very beginning that we approached it with skepticism and the information I have received so far is that that skepticism is well founded," Powell told a news conference. "There are problems with the declaration."

Powell did not elaborate, and it was unclear what steps Washington would take after delivering its verdict.

On Tuesday, the German newspaper Tageszeitung said the dossier showed the 80 German firms and institutes contributing to the Iraqi weapons programs since 1975 represented more than the combined total of all firms from other countries.

It said the United States was a distant second with about two dozen companies listed in the Iraqi documents.

VERDICT TOWARD "END OF WEEK"

A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last month gave Iraq a last chance to come clean on its weapons programs or face serious consequences -- diplomatic language for war.

"We'll withhold making a final judgment or final statement until we have completed our analysis, completed our discussions with UNMOVIC (the U.N. arms inspectorate) and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and our colleagues on the permanent membership of the Security Council," Powell said.

"Then statements will be forthcoming, I expect, toward the end of the week after (UNMOVIC's Hans) Blix makes his presentation to the Security Council on Thursday."

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said this month the Iraqi declaration on its banned weapons programs would not itself trigger a U.S. decision to go to war.

But at the White House, Fleischer said: "I think it was abundantly plain from the will of the United Nations -- this was Iraq's last chance to inform the world in an accurate, complete and full way what weapons of mass destruction they possessed."
Britain's newspaper the Sun said on Tuesday the Defense Ministry had begun a build-up for war by issuing Urgent Operational Requirement notices to makers of defense equipment and hiring cargo ships to take equipment to the Gulf.

"It is purely speculative. As the defense secretary, the prime minister and the foreign secretary have been saying for weeks, military action is neither imminent nor inevitable and diplomatic routes are still being pursued," a ministry spokeswoman told Reuters.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Iraqi official (R) talks with U.N. weapons inspection team before it starts a search for weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad, Dec. 17, 2002. The United States will deliver its final verdict later this week on Iraq's weapons declaration after warning there were problems with the dossier and that Baghdad would not get a second chance. (Suhaib Salem/Reuter