A rchive Date
[ 08-05-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/05/07/81719-ap.html
Troops find proof of weapons program?
By ROBERT RUSSO
Wed, May 7, 2003
WASHINGTON (CP) - The Bush administration, striving to demonstrate that the invasion of Iraq was sparked by legitimate concerns about weapons of mass destruction, said Wednesday it may have recovered an Iraqi mobile biological weapons lab.
No conclusive evidence that Iraq had an arsenal of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons has been found so far despite intensive searches of hundreds of suspected sites by the coalition forces. U.S. soldiers were testing a truck-trailer that included a fermenter and air filtration system after being tipped about mobile laboratories by a defector.
Pentagon officials, who have hunted for these labs without success for years, were wary about calling the trailer a breakthrough.
"On the smoking gun, I don't know," said Stephen Cambone, U.S. undersecretary of defence for intelligence.
The trailer was seized April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint in northern Iraq. It is painted in military green and was loaded onto a transporter normally used for tanks.
"While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for purposes other than biological weapons agent production, U.S. and U.K. technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond what the defector said it was for, which is the production of biological agents," Cambone said.
Polls suggest Americans are still euphoric over the relative ease with which Saddam Hussein was driven from power in Iraq and have not begun to ask questions about the justification for the war.
But there is considerable unease in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has faced persistent questions. Blair has remained adament that banned weapons will be found.
While finding chemical, biological or nuclear weapons isn't an immediate political priority in the United States for President George W. Bush, Blair has made it clear that he expects to be able to demonstrate that the invasion was sparked by legitimate concerns.
Lt.-Gen. William Wallace said American forces have collected "plenty of documentary evidence" suggesting that Saddam had an active program for weapons of mass destruction.
"We've collected evidence, much of it documentary," Wallace, commander of the army's 5th Corps, said Wednesday from Baghdad in a videoconference with Pentagon reporters.
"A lot of the information that we're getting is coming from lower-tier Iraqis who had some knowledge of the program but not full knowledge of the program," he said. "And it's just taking us a while to sort through all of that."
He did not elaborate.
Sanctions and the United Nations inspections regime may have prompted Saddam to dispose of much of his arsenal, U.S. officials have said, suggesting that biological weapons in particular are easy to destroy and chemical agents could have been dumped in the desert.
Meanwhile, the former Iraqi dictator may have resurfaced. In a new audiotape, the first allegedly made by Saddam since U.S.-led forces ousted him last month, the deposed Iraqi leader urged his countrymen to fight foreign occupation. The Sydney Morning Herald said it received the 14-minute tape from two men in Baghdad on Monday.
The United States said it was studying the tape to see if it was authentic.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said recently that the only way the weapons might be tracked down was from the interrogation of former officials.
The Pentagon said earlier this week that American forces had detained Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, 49, the scientist dubbed Mrs Anthrax for her alleged role in running Iraq's clandestine biological weapons program.
Ammash handed herself in to coalition forces Sunday.
The former dean of Baghdad University's College of Science is a U.S.-trained microbiologist suspected of managing a secret biological weapons program that included the weaponization of anthrax, smallpox and botulinum toxin.
She was also the only woman in the top ranks of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, and appeared in uniform alongside him and his son Qusay in a video released a week into the war.
Ammash was trained by Nasir al-Hindawi, who is viewed by UN inspectors as the father of Iraq's biological weapons program. He was captured last month.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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