Inspectors want answers from Iraqis
DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press
miami.com
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations' chief weapons inspector said Friday he'll be raising several questions about Iraq's recent arms declaration when he returns to Baghdad later this month for meetings with Iraqi officials.
"There are a couple of questions that have arisen as a result of the long declaration ... and we'd like to follow up some of those," said Hans Blix, who heads the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, charged with investigating Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs.
Last month Blix told the Security Council that Iraq's declaration didn't include a list of nutrients Baghdad acquired for producing biological warfare agents including anthrax.
He also said Iraq's reporting of its destruction of anthrax supplies from 1988 to 1991 "may not be accurate." Iraq declared earlier that it produced 2,210 gallons of anthrax, but inspectors have estimated it could have been as much as 6,240 gallons. Baghdad hasn't accounted for the destruction of everything that was produced, he said.
Iraq also didn't provide sufficient information about its production of missile engines, 50 conventional warheads it claims were destroyed but haven't been recovered, 550 mustard gas shells declared lost after the 1991 Gulf War, production and weaponization of the deadly VX nerve agent, and its unilateral destruction of biological warfare agents, he told the council on Dec. 19.
Blix and his counterpart, Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating Iraq's nuclear programs, are expected to meet with Iraqi officials in Baghdad later in January.
Blix said Friday the Iraqis were continuing to cooperate with inspectors on the ground. But he wouldn't confirm Iraqi claims that his inspectors hadn't found anything so far. Instead he said: "We are spreading over the country and seeing more sites. There are also samples being taken and analyzed."
He will brief the council in fuller detail next Thursday and submit his first official report on Jan. 27.
In the meantime, Blix's office is still working out details for conducting interviews with Iraqi scientists. The United States has been pressing hard for inspectors to begin questioning Iraqis who may have inside knowledge of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.
"We are now examining a lot of names here. There will be interviews and we are deciding the modalities, the modes and the place."
Blix's commission hasn't conducted any formal interviews since inspections resumed five weeks ago after a four-year break. The Vienna-based IAEA has conducted two interviews so far, both while Iraqi government officials were present, U.N. officials said.
On Thursday, President Bush said he was "hopeful we won't have to go to war," but was skeptical about Saddam's willingness to voluntarily rid his country of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
One reason Bush gave for his doubts were reports of interviews of Iraqi scientists by U.N. weapons inspectors with "minders in the room." |
