Blix Says U.S., Britain Must Share Intelligence

20/12/2002| IslamWeb

The chief U.N. weapons inspector accused the U.S. and Britain Friday of not sharing intelligence on Iraq's alleged doomsday weapons, hours after Washington said Baghdad was in "material breach" of a Security Council resolution. Bolstered by reports from U.N. arms inspectors, Secretary of State Colin Powell  has made clear that time is running out for a peaceful solution. President Bush  is to offer his first substantive comment on Iraq's weapons declaration Friday.

At the same time the Pentagon  escalated plans to move more U.S. troops into the Gulf region.

Bush administration officials indicated the next milestone date would be January 27 when the U.N. weapons inspectors are scheduled to make their first substantial assessment to the Security Council. They said Bush could make a decision around that time to attack Iraq.

U.N. experts meanwhile resumed their hunt for banned weapons in Iraq and a Baghdad newspaper said U.S. and British "lies" were aimed at justifying war.

Addressing the U.N. Thursday, Hans Blix, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons inspection teams in Iraq, said the 12,000-page Iraqi arms declaration mainly repeated old reports and revealed little new data.

Friday, he turned on two of Iraq's fiercest critics, saying, "If the UK and the U.S. are convinced and they say they have evidence, well then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where is this stuff."

Asked if he was getting all the cooperation he wanted from western intelligence, he told BBC radio: "Not yet. We get some but we don't get all we need.

"The most important thing that governments like the UK or the US could give us would be to tell us of sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction. This is what we want to have," he said.

"We get a lot of briefings about what they believe the Iraqis have. But what of course you really need to have is an indication of a place where things are stored -- if they know it."

Blix told the Security Council in his initial report on the Iraqi dossier that it had failed to include data on some chemical and biological agents, such as anthrax, in what he called a "missed opportunity."

Iraq's Ba'ath Party newspaper al-Thawra said Friday that recent inspections of sites mentioned in a British government dossier on Iraqi arms programs had "exposed the lies and allegations by the Bush administration and its ally Blair."

The editorial in al-Thawra challenged the U.S. and British governments to substantiate their charges that Iraq is still pursuing its quest for chemical, biological and nuclear arms.

"If they have other information, as they allege, why don't they give it to the inspection teams to verify?" it asked.

Meanwhile, U.N. inspection teams returned to the sprawling al-Tuwaitha complex, the main site of Iraq's nuclear program. They have been to the complex several times since returning to Iraq last month.

TURNING POINT

The pronouncements of a "material breach" by Powell in Washington and the U.S. ambassador to the Security Council in New York Thursday marked a turning point in tough U.S. warnings to President Saddam Hussein .

Iraq immediately criticized as "baseless" the U.S. charges that it had withheld information in its declaration, called for in a November 8 tough Security Council resolution.

"The United States made it clear that the matter is not disarmament but to change the legitimate government of Iraq," said Muhammed S. Ali, Iraq's deputy U.N. ambassador.

But Powell said the weapons documents showed Iraq's "pattern of non-cooperation, its pattern of deception, its pattern of dissembling, its pattern of lying."

"If that is going to be the way they continue through the weeks ahead, then we're not going to find a peaceful solution to the problem," Powell added.

Britain said it was "deeply disappointed" at Iraq's arms declaration, given to the council on December 7, but stopped short of calling it a material breach.

France, which had been critical of U.S. policies, said it supported the inspectors' assessments. Its U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said the declaration "clearly does not answer unresolved and pending questions."

Russia's U.N. ambassador Sergei Lavrov said it was not up to one member to declare a material breach and said the arms inspectors should not be "pushed into a direction that they themselves do not believe is advisable."

PHOTO CAPTION

U.N. arms experts converse inside al-Tuwatha complex in Baghdad, Dec. 20, 2002. Weapons experts resumed their hunt for banned weapons in Iraq, and a Baghdad newspaper said U.S. and British 'lies' were aimed at justifying war. (Faleh Kheiber/Reuter