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Blix to Iraq: Give Evidence or Face War
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix says Iraq must provide new evidence about its nuclear, chemical and biological programs or face the possibility of war. "I think they only need look around their borders and they should realize the seriousness" of the situation, Blix said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press and Associated Press Television News, alluding to the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Kuwait. Blix said the inspectors need months to finish searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, but they may not get the time if the Security Council decides to stop inspections - or the United States takes military action.
The world wants Iraq to disarm peacefully, Blix said. But to do that it must provide documents, allow U.N. inspectors to interview Iraqi scientists in private, and show physical evidence of what facilities and weapons have been destroyed.
Which they can't and won't do.
"What the show of force demonstrates to Iraq is that here is the other alternative," he said. Blix said the key message that he and Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will deliver to Iraqi officials when they visit Baghdad on Sunday and Monday is that Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration submitted to inspectors last month did not contain any new evidence to verify its claim that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. "We need to have more evidence supplied to us. There are a great many open questions as to their possession of weapons of mass destruction and the Security Council and the world would like to be assured that these questions be sorted out," Blix said.
In remarks aired late Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Baghdad is ready to answer any questions by U.N. inspectors, but insisted the arms report was comprehensive.
"The declaration answers everything, but ... if they have any questions they would like to present to Iraq or issues that they want clarified from the Iraqi side, we welcome them in the meetings that will be held in Iraq," Sabri said.
Iraq's "active cooperation" in answering outstanding questions is the most critical issue now, Blix said. "We think they have more evidence. In the situation in which they find themselves, I think they should make a very strong effort to produce this."
Blix had complained that the United States and Britain kept saying they had evidence of Iraqi weapons programs, but weren't handing over the information. But U.N. officials said inspectors have started receiving intelligence from Britain and the United States and others, and expect further information.
"We are getting much more information from several sources, and we do want to have it from several sources because that increases our credibility and the number of places we can go to," Blix said. "So I'm more optimistic on this score today."
This is something I have been wondering about. We have (I'm assuming) info from satellite photos and other means about sites where we know they have WMD. We want to destroy these on day 1 of the war so we don't want Saddam to know what we know. However, it would be nice for diplomatic cover to have the U.N. inspectors find something that Sammy can't afford to give up. Now that much of what we need for a strike is, or soon will be in place, do we give them info on, say, one or two such sites just before the 27th? It sure would be nice to see the inspectors denied access to a site, and Blix have to report the same. Wishful thinking, I guess.
The United States has also been pressing inspectors to take scientists outside Iraq for interviews. But Blix said such interviews still pose challenges. "We don't think we should be a mechanism for defection," Blix said. In the meantime, he said, inspectors will conduct some interviews with scientists in Baghdad this week. Which will do nothing.
Blix and ElBaradei stressed that their Jan. 27 report to the Security Council would be an update - not a final report on the inspections that resumed in November after four years.
"We can see a lot of work ahead of us beyond that date if we are allowed to do so," Blix said, but the decision on whether inspections continue is up to the Security Council.
He said he did not know how long the American government was willing to wait for his team to complete its searches.
"It could be that one day they will say, 'Move aside boys, we are coming in,'" he told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Monday. "That's possible, but I think a great many people and a great many governments would prefer to have disarmament through peaceful means."
Or not at all.
If the council does not take any action on Jan. 27, Blix told APTN that inspectors will go ahead with plans to identify by late March the key disarmament tasks that Iraq must fulfill before sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait can be suspended. These are likely to include detailed information about its anthrax and deadly VX nerve agent production, he said.
Posted by: Steve 2003-01-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=9255