WMD....WMD....WMD...??????? Banned Weapons Equipment 'Missing from 109 Iraq Sites'
[KLP Note: What on earth will the Democrats and the UN say about this....how can "items that are now missing" be missing...if they weren't there in the first place? See the blog notes at the bottom of the Scotsman article (to give this credence and the 'Outside the Beltway" blog after it...]
Friday, June 5, 2005 4:11am (UK)
news.scotsman.com
United Nations experts say equipment and material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq.
UN inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the US-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to UN monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In a report to the UN Security Council obtained yesterday, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said imagery analysts had identified 109 sites that had been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the amount and types of equipment at the sites, and the percentage of items that are no longer at the places where UN inspectors monitored them.
From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads had concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
He said the so-called dual use equipment and material missing from the sites could be used for legitimate purposes. “However, they can also be utilised for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair and integrated in a production line in a suitable environment,” he said.
Perricos also stressed that no conclusions could be made about “the destination of all items removed”.
Equipment and material could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased by someone else. He said inspectors also could not make any determination about what may be inside buildings where roofs are intact and satellite imagery can’t penetrate.
The commission, known as Unmovic, previously reported the discovery of some equipment and material from the sites in scrapyards in Jordan and the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared. “Due to its characteristics, this equipment can be used for the production of both commercial chemicals and chemical warfare agents and their precursors,” he said.
Reflecting the scale of the missing items, the report said 628 corrosion-resistant metal sheets, 3,380 valves, 107 pumps and more than 8.125 miles of pipes were known to have been located at the 39 chemical sites.
A third of the chemical items removed came from the Qaa Qaa industrial complex south of Baghdad which the report said “was among the sites possessing the highest number of dual-use production equipment, whose fate is now unknown”.
Significant quantities of missing material were also located at the Fallujah II and Fallujah III facilities north of the city, which was besieged last year.
Before the first Gulf War in 1991, those facilities played a major part in the production of precursors for Iraq’s chemical warfare programme.
The percentages of missing biological equipment from 12 sites were much smaller – no higher than 10% – and the state of repair varied from good to poor.
But according to the report 37 of 405 fermenters ranging in size from eight to 5,000 litres had been removed. Those could be used to produce pharmaceuticals and vaccines as well as biological warfare agents such as anthrax.
The largest percentages of missing items were at the 58 missile facilities, which include some of the key production sites for both solid and liquid propellant missiles, the report said.
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Friday, June 3, 2005
U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq
Posted by James Joyner at 06:47
outsidethebeltway.com
The U.N.'s Iraq inspection team reports that long-range missiles and weapons used for making chemical and biological materials is unaccounted for.
U.N.: Weapons Equipment Missing in Iraq (AP)
U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased. He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair." He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where U.N. inspectors monitored them. From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
The commission, known as UNMOVIC, previously reported the discovery of some equipment and material from the sites in scrapyards in Jordan and the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared. "Due to its characteristics, this equipment can be used for the production of both commercial chemicals and chemical warfare agents," he said.
Quite bizarre. As Perricos notes, UNMOVIC is doing this via satellite imagery and without input from people on the ground who may have a perfectly good explanation for this. It would be nice to have it, though.
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outsidethebeltway.com
How could this be? Iraq DIDN’T HAVE any banned missles or equipment for making chemical and biological weapons, RIGHT?
Meanwhile you have Syria testing scuds. Conincidence? Maybe.
Just a matter of time before the lid is blown off the WMD issue. What will the Bush-haters say then?
Material has turned up in Jordan and Rotterdam. Fairly solid proof of the proliferation that was one argument in the case for war.
Posted by: LJD at June 3, 2005 11:12 Permalink |
