Iraq will not admit to outlawed weapons, says general
Iraq’s report on chemical, biological and nuclear programmes will not include any admission that Baghdad still maintains weapons of mass destruction, a senior Iraqi official said today.
“It will be declaration which comprises, of course, new elements,” said General Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer to UN weapons inspectors.
“These new elements are with regards to new sites and new activities which have been conducted during the absence of the inspectors.”
He said those activities include those which could be for peaceful or military purposes “but not prohibited activities.”
President George Bush’s administration insists that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.
Amin said the declaration, which will be handed over on Saturday, will be in Arabic and English and delivered to the UN in hard copy, not CDs.
“We are trying to make it a hard copy because it will be easier for the people to check and to read and to evaluate,” Amin said.
Amin said copies would be given to the UN nuclear regulatory agency and to the UN office in charge of monitoring Iraq’s chemical, biological and missile programmes.
UN monitors spent five hours today inspecting a desert factory that was once the heart of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons industries.
A second team visited the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex to check on new construction and other changes since the last inspection in 1998.
The Al-Tuwaitha site, 15 miles south-east of Baghdad, has long been an issue of international concern. The site was bombed by Israeli warplanes in 1981 and again by the Americans in the Gulf War 10 years later. Recent satellite photos have spotted new construction.
The inspectors who drove to the desert chemical weapons factory were making a return visit to check that President Saddam Hussein’s government had not resumed production at the site.
In the late 1990s, inspectors demolished the al-Muthanna State Establishment, in wastelands 40 miles north-west of Baghdad, after finding it had been key to Iraq’s production of some of the deadliest chemical weapons known: mustard gas, tabun, sarin and VX nerve agent.
The desert centre operated under the name of Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production, but the Iraqis finally admitted to the UN monitors that al-Muthanna produced 4,000 tons of chemical warfare agent per year.
Al-Muthanna also became instrumental in the development of biological agents, reportedly including anthrax.
Iraqi liaison officer Raad Manhal said the arms experts had searched today for signs of resumed production at the site.
“There were looking for any change, and they found no change,” he said.
Elsewhere, US war planes bombed an Iraqi air defence site in the northern no fly zone about 15 miles from the city of Mosul. The attack was ordered came after the Iraqis fired on jets patrolling the area, US officials said.
