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Iraqi dossier ’full of holes’
A preliminary report by the United States on Iraq's weapons dossier has found the declaration to be full of omissions, US media report. The document contains scant new information and fails to account for missing chemical and biological weapons, according to senior US officials quoted by the New York Times. The US and Russia - which received advance copies of the declaration last Sunday - presented their initial findings to UN weapons inspection chiefs on Friday, according to news agency reports. The 12,000-page dossier is being examined by US intelligence officials and a final assessment is unlikely to be completed for several weeks. One unnamed US official told the New York Times the omissions in the dossier were "big enough to drive a tank through". A tank division would be about right The declaration fails to account for chemical and biological weapons that were missing when UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the US officials say. This includes hundreds of mustard gas shells and biological bombs, they say. Nor does the dossier explain why Iraq purchased material including uranium from Africa and hi-tech equipment from Western countries, which US officials say could be used in the manufacture of nuclear bombs. A UN diplomat who has seen the dossier said much of it "seems to be recycled" from earlier declarations, the newspaper reported. Just put a new cover on the old document Iraq reiterated on Friday that its dossier provided a full and honest account of its weapons programmes. The declaration "is truthful and complete. [There are] no omissions in it," the Iraqi liaison with the UN arms teams, General Hossam Mohamed Amin, told the Iraqi al-Iraq newspaper. Times almost up. Posted by: Steve 2002-12-13 |
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