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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bacchus_ii who wrote (59868)	12/4/2002 3:52:51 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

That column makes great sense, if you accept the premise that the whole Iraq thing was cooked up for election purposes. If, on the other hand, you think that the Bush administration is reacting, or more precisely, trying to proactively head off, real national security threats, then you may have to rejigger your thinking. I'm not sure if anyone who writes for the Guardian is capable of that. Meanwhile, Iraq announces that it intends to claim that it doesn't have any WMDs: Iraq Declaration Will Not Admit to Banned Weapons Wed Dec 4,12:26 PM ET By Nadim Ladki BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said Wednesday the declaration it will hand to the U.N. will describe its biological, chemical, missile and nuclear technologies, but will not admit to having weapons of mass destruction. "The declaration will repeat that in Iraq there are no weapons of mass destruction," Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, told a news conference. Iraq's denial that it possesses any such weapons puts it on a direct collision course with the United States, which insists it knows Iraq has them, demands a full and frank confession from Baghdad and warns it will disarm Iraq by force if necessary. "It will be a huge declaration. Of course it contains new elements," Amin added. Sunday is the deadline for the statement to the U.N., and Amin has said Iraq will supply it Saturday. "Those new elements are with regard to new sites and new activities that were conducted during the absence of the inspectors and those activities are dual-use activities." U.N. weapons experts last week resumed inspections of sites in Iraq after leaving in 1998 complaining Iraqi authorities were obstructing them. "Dual-use" refers to technology with both civilian and military applications. Amin added that the statement "covers biological, chemical and missile and nuclear activities, but not prohibited activities." President Bush (news - web sites) said of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) on Tuesday: "He says he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. He's got them. He's not only got them he's used them. "The choice is his. And if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him, in the name of peace." U.N. experts searched Iraq's main nuclear research facility and a former chemical arms production center Wednesday as the United States demanded a more aggressive hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "We want to make certain that they (U.N. inspections) are aggressive enough to be able to ascertain the facts in the face of an adversary who in the past did everything in his power to hide the facts," a White House spokesman said. STATEMENT IN ARABIC AND ENGLISH Amin said there would be Arabic and English copies of the declaration. "We are trying to deliver them with hard copy not CD-ROMs but if we have no time, some of them maybe with CD-ROMs. But we are trying to make it hard copy, because it would be easier for people to read and evaluate," he told reporters. Diplomats at the U.N. said the declaration was expected to be turned over to U.N. inspectors in Baghdad late Saturday and arrive at U.N. headquarters in New York late Sunday for at least 10 days of translation and analysis. Amin said Iraq was cooperating fully with U.N. weapons inspectors but condemned their inspection of a presidential palace in Baghdad Tuesday, saying it was unjustified provocation. "The aim (of palace inspection) is political. It aims at provoking Iraq and hurting its dignity and sovereignty," Amin said. He said the inspectors had visited 20 sites over the past week, the vast majority of which had been visited repeatedly by inspection teams before they pulled out of Iraq in 1998. He said Iraq was cooperating fully with the inspectors to speed up the inspection process and pave the way for the experts to declare Iraq free of banned weapons, a key condition for the lifting of U.N. sanctions in force for the last 12 years. story.news.yahoo.com