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Iraq sought UN help to buy special radars-Blix
Iraq demanded U.N. help in buying sophisticated radars for two airfields as a condition for safe overflights by a U-2 spy plane loaned to U.N. arms inspectors, chief inspector Hans Blix said on Tuesday. U.N. inspectors have set up regional offices in Mosul to the north of Baghdad and in the southern city of Basra to help them in their work, and rely on nearby airfields in both cities. "They wanted us to support permission for them to import special radars for Basra and Mosul," said Blix, who is responsible for accounting for Iraq's ballistic missiles and chemical and biological weapons. U.S. and British coalition warplanes patrolling "no-fly" zones over Iraq have regularly targeted radar facilities and other strategic sites in recent months as the U.S. military builds up forces in the Gulf region to prepare for a possible war with Iraq.Humm, I wondered when they were going to run out of radars. Blix said he rejected the condition as inappropriate as the Iraqis had made no such demand on U-2 overflights under a previous U.N. inspection regime. "This was not anything like they had in the past," Blix told CNN. Blix's comments came a day after he briefed the U.N. Security Council, giving a tough recital of gaps in Iraqi data on weapons of mass destruction and saying Baghdad had not come to a "genuine acceptance" of its disarmament obligations. During the closed-door portion of his briefing, Blix spelled out three conditions set by Iraq before his inspectors could begin the U-2 overflights, council members told Reuters. In addition to help in buying the radar equipment, Iraq wanted to be notified in advance of every U-2 flight and asked that the no-fly zones be suspended during those flights. Ah, no. Anthing else? The U.S. military is also using low-flying unmanned Predator spy planes in the southern no-fly zone.Piloted U-2s -- veterans of Cold War flights over the Soviet Union -- fly very high. The United States has offered Predators to the U.N. inspectors as well, but the United Nations has apparently turned down the offer. Blix has repeatedly criticized Baghdad in recent weeks for imposing unacceptable conditions on U-2 flights, but Iraq has not backed down. "Satellites can't loiter over an area. If you have inspections in an area, a U-2 can hover over it," Blix said last week. Which is why the Iraqis don't want them there. Posted by: Steve 2003-01-28 |
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