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

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (60944)	12/10/2002 5:46:29 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Gulf News says: Provide proof, not rhetoric Dubai:Tuesday, December 10, 2002 gulf-news.com It is no great shock that copies of the Iraq dossier on weapons of mass destruction, WMD, have been passed on to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The only surprise is that the Security Council should have been so coy about it. For it was inevitable that it would vote itself the power for the permanent members - the U.S., Russia, France, China and Britain - on the basis that the members "have the technical expertise to assess the risks involved in releasing the contents to other countries. It is likely that both the U.S. and Britain were itching to get their hands on the documents, to be able to prove their lack of credibility in comparison to the information that has been so painstakingly crafted by western intelligence. While it is true that the five permanent members all have nuclear capability, and all have expert knowledge of weapons of mass destruction - some having used such deterrents - the claim that their inspection will stop any leakage of sensitive information is merely a ploy. For it is obvious that both Britain and America want to speed up the process of evaluation of the documents. Already the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Unmovic, were saying that it will take "several weeks" before a full and proper analysis of the dossier would be forthcoming. Such a claim would have disheartened the American president and the British prime minister, who are both keen to "get things moving". Or, put another way, to discredit the dossier and start an invasion campaign against Iraq. So far, America and Britain have not produced tangible and credible evidence that Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction; nor have any inspectors found any such evidence. If there was such evidence, it would seem logical for the inspectors to home in on those locations first. If that is what they have done, then they have come away remarkably empty-handed. America consistently claims that if Iraq claims it has no weapons of mass destruction, or dual-use material in its possession, then this in itself would be contravening UN Resolution 1441, since it would be a falsehood. But, for that to be true, America has to supply proof of the falsehood. Mere words alone will not suffice.