A rchive Date
[ 27-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/01/26/16258-ap.html
Powell Loses Faith In Weapons Inspectors
Iraq accuses Powell of `series of lies,' says it's fully co operated with UN
Mon, January 27, 2003
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's foreign minister accused U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell of a "series of lies" for alleging Baghdad had not co-operated with United Nations weapons monitors, and said he hoped the chief inspectors would deliver an "objective" report later in the day.
Naji Sabri said his government had fully co-operated with the inspectors and described U.S. complaints about Iraqi scientists' refusal of private interviews as a diversionary tactic, stemming from Washington's failure to produce concrete evidence of any banned weapons.
"You ask us to force them," he said at a news conference. "Even in your countries can you force anybody to be interviewed?"
Sabri met reporters just hours before chief inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, report to the UN Security Council on what their arms teams have found and how well Iraq has co-operated in the first two months of their search for weapons programs, forbidden to Iraq since its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraqis waited for the UN judgment day confident they'll get a "grey" report, a passing grade, for accepting arms inspections, but wary of UN complaints that could help tilt the balance between war and peace. The U.S. and British governments threaten to invade this country if, in their view, it has not sufficiently complied with the UN disarmament demands.
Iraq looks for a UN report that "will present facts as they are, that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," Sabri said. "And we hope the Security Council will lift the criminal sanctions on the Iraqi people."
He said Powell told a "series of lies" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, over the weekend "about Iraq not co-operating over the last 11 years" with UN arms inspections.
He noted that the UN monitors, in their new round of field missions in Iraq, have mounted almost 500 inspections without incident "to offices, guesthouses, mosques, universities, hospitals, factories, military sites."
"How were those things done without Iraqi co-operation?" he asked.
On scientists' interviews, he said Iraq was meeting its UN obligation by "providing access" to weapons specialists. It is "hair-splitting," he said, to complain that the handful asked to submit to interviews without an Iraqi official monitoring - a U.S. demand - have refused to do so.
Inspectors feel scientists would be more candid without a government monitor present. American officials allege, without citing evidence, the Iraqi leadership has threatened to kill scientists who disclose sensitive information.
Sabri said the scientists fear, instead, that their words might be changed after private interviews. In western countries, he asked, "can you force them to answer without the presence of their lawyer?"
He said the controversy was stirred up by U.S. officials "because they have found nothing. They have no evidence, because there is nothing."
He said of Washington and London, "their aim it to occupy the country ..n. to control its oil." He referred to U.S. and British leaders as "warmongers" who "export evil to other countries."
On the eve of the inspectors' assessment, President Saddam Hussein convened a joint meeting of his ruling Baath party's leadership and the Revolution Command Council, Iraq's highest executive body, to discuss what official media called "political conditions."
No statement was issued afterward. "It's reached the point where Iraq can only react. It can't do anything," said a senior Baghdad diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's all up to Blix."
Hossam Mohammed Amin, the general who is the inspectors' chief Iraqi liaison, said last week he didn't expect a "100-per cent white" report. Blix has complained, for example, about Iraq's resistance to American reconnaissance overflights on behalf of the UN effort. Instead, Amin said, Iraq expected a grey report.
Washington and London contend they know Baghdad retains banned weapons and say a refusal to surrender them may bring on a U.S.-British invasion. But the two governments have presented no proof, and much of the world wants the Security Council to allow inspections more time.
The inspectors dropped in unannounced Monday on a missile factory 40 kilometres west of Baghdad and on a Health Ministry storage facility in the capital, the Information Ministry reported. At the Baghdad site, a UN team in protective suits could be seen using portable detectors to check metal containers.
The ministry said another team conducted "mobile surveying," without further explanation. On Sunday, UN inspectors surveyed an area of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, with radiation detectors, the Foreign Ministry said.
The people of Baghdad, a lively, traffic-filled city despite 12 years of international sanctions on trade, went about their daily business. Few except top government officials have access to satellite television channels to watch the Blix and ElBaradei speeches at UN headquarters in New York.
Behind a facade of normalcy, ordinary Iraqis were deeply worried.
"We don't want war," middle-aged educator Saadi Khalef told a reporter, and then went on with the bravado commonly heard here: "But if war is imposed on us, every Muslim and every Iraqi, Christian and other, will carry a weapon to defend the country."
Although public opinion polls are unknown in authoritarian Iraq, frequent visitor Denis J. Halliday, a former UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, said Sunday that astute Iraqis believe the fear of imminent conflict is declining - "from 75 per cent to 65 per cent of the people," in one estimate - because of growing diplomatic opposition to U.S. talk of war.
Halliday and an international team of public health specialists were separately in Baghdad to raise concerns about the impact of war on the civilian population, particularly younger Iraqis.
"Deaths among children directly and indirectly could amount to more than 100,000 children," said Dr. Eric Hoskins, Canadian leader of the International Study Team, which reviewed health, food and other resources in three major Iraqi cities.
He said at least 500,000 Iraqi children are either malnourished or underweight, and Iraq has no more than a one-month supply of food and a three-month supply of drugs in central hospitals.
American bombing of electricity installations during the 1991 Gulf War crippled the Iraqi sewage treatment system and that, in particular, later contributed to many thousands of deaths among Iraqi children from gastrointestinal disease, experts said. Such hardships were aggravated by the tight UN restrictions on Iraqi imports.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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