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Iraq Illegally Imported Missile Engines Last Year
Iraq has illegally imported missile engines and fuel and unsuccessfully tried to buy aluminum tubes, but it is unclear they were meant for banned weapons, UN arms inspectors told the Security Council Thursday, January 9. "Mahmoud, order two dozen missile engines, wouldja?" "Sure, boss. We ain't gonna use them in missiles, are we?" "No, no! Certainly not!" "Well, what are we gonna use them for?" "Ummm... Something else." "Inspections have confirmed the presence of a relatively large number of missile engines, some imported as late as 2002," chief UN inspector Hans Blix said in a statement to the council made available to Agence France-Presse (AFP). In a three-hour closed briefing, Blix told the council Iraq had also imported raw materials for the production of solid rocket fuel. "But that doesn't mean they were gonna use it in rocket fuel. There's other uses it could be put to." "Like what?" "Explosives." All military sales to Iraq are banned under council resolutions adopted after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. But the resolutions do not forbid Iraq to have conventional arms. They do bar Iraq from possessing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles with a range of 150 kilometers (93 miles) or more, and insist on the destruction of those already in Iraqi hands. "There! See? I took the warhead off. It doesn't work without the warhead, so mark that one destroyed..." Blix said the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission had yet to determine whether the imported engines were intended for missiles in that category. "There's no smoking gun," Blix said yesterday, as the bullets from the smoke-free weapon whizzed around his ears. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-01-10 |
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