A rchive Date
[ 20-12-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2002/12/19/7854-ap.html
Official: No worries for Iraq
Thu, December 19, 2002
BAGHDAD (AP) - Those who want to attack Iraq have reason to be concerned about the UN assessment of its weapons declaration - but Iraq needn't worry, President Saddam Hussein's science adviser said Thursday.
"We're not worried," Amir al-Saadi said at a Baghdad news conference. "It's the other party that's worried because there's nothing to pin on us."
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said Thursday he will tell the Security Council that there is "not much" new information about Iraq's weapons programs in its 12,000-page declaration.
Iraq denies having weapons of mass destruction but the United States and Britain contend Iraq does have banned arms and have called the Iraqi declaration incomplete.
Al-Saadi said it was natural that the inspectors would see little new in the declaration because it covered ground on which the Iraqis already had extensively reported to UN agencies.
"The new part, which is written in Arabic, requires translation, not just translation, but technical translation" that will take time, al-Saadi said.
After days of intense internal debate, U.S. President George Bush directed Secretary of State Powell to make the U.S. case again Saddam's 12,000-page declaration Thursday afternoon.
A U.S. analysis of the Iraqi declaration "shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions, and all of this is troublesome," Powell said Wednesday.
As Powell prepared his report, Bush and his foreign policy advisers swung back and forth on the question of whether Iraq is in "material breach" of the United Nations, which would provide what Bush considers legal justification for war.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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