US Warns Baghdad as Its Warplanes Again Bomb Iraq
January 24, 2002 4:05 pm EST
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes on Thursday bombed Iraqi air defense targets for the third time this week, and a senior U.S. official warned Baghdad that time was running short to allow U.N. arms inspectors back into that country.
The official spoke with reporters in Geneva as the top U.S. military officer told a Pentagon briefing in Washington that Baghdad could not take advantage of the U.S. military's focus on Afghanistan.
"At the same time that we are looking at Afghanistan, in the last three days we have reacted as we will any time that we can ascertain where it (Iraqi ground fire) is coming from," said Air Force Gen. Richard Myers.
"We will react to those threats to our patrolling aircraft" over no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, added the chairman of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Myers spoke as the senior U.S. official warned in Geneva that time was running short for Iraq to let United Nations inspectors return to check whether Baghdad was developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The official, who declined to be identified, said there was every indication Iraq had been "aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction capability" in the three years since it forced U.N. inspectors to leave.
"We are coming to a critical point with Iraq," the official told reporters. He said Washington was not prepared to let the situation drag on, although he declined to say what its response might be.
"They (the Iraqis) ... need to let the weapons inspectors back in. If they do not, there are going to be consequences," the official said.
NO BIOLOGICAL ARMS PROGRAM, SAYS IRAQ
Iraq admits that it once sought to develop biological weapons but says that it no longer has any such program.
Baghdad was forced to accept the U.N. inspectors following its defeat by a U.S.-led international force in the 1991 Gulf War, but inspectors had to abandon the country in 1998.
Despite Iraq's denial, the official said Baghdad had used the last three years to press ahead with weapons development.
"They are clearly trying to get back to where they were before the (Gulf) war. I don't think they are there yet but there is a lot of activity," the official said.
The U.S. military's Central Command said at its headquarters in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday that precision-guided bombs were used against an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq after threats against warplanes patrolling a "no-fly" zone in the south.
U.S. and British warplanes have patrolled such zones in northern and Iraq for a decade since the 1991 Gulf War. They are periodically challenged by anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.
Such tit-for-tat attacks have slacked off in recent months, but Myers said that three bombing attacks have occurred this week despite the intense U.S. military focus on the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
"What we see is what they've been doing over some period of time," he told reporters. "And that is that aircraft that patrol both in the north and in the south supporting U.N. resolutions are fired upon by Iraqi air defenses."
In Baghdad, an Iraqi military spokesman was quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency as saying that both U.S. and British warplanes flying from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on Thursday attacked civilian and service installations in the southern provinces of Basra and Nassiriya.
The spokesman said warplanes had also struck targets in Basra and Nassiriya on Monday and Wednesday.
No casualties were reported. |
