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Strategies & Market Trends : P&S and STO Death Blow's -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nsumir81 who wrote (28760)	3/1/2003 1:13:49 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30712

Iraq Begins Destroying Banned Missiles. story.news.yahoo.com Iraq Begins Destroying Banned Missiles. the United States dismissed the step as insufficient and deceptive "The president has always predicted that Iraq would destroy its Al Samoud missiles as part of its game of deception." U.S. preparations for possible war on Iraq won a boost Saturday when Turkey's parliament narrowly approved the deployment of tens of thousands of American troops on the country's soil. The U.S. military wants to open a second front from Turkey for an invasion into northern Iraq. Ankara and Washington still have to seal an agreement over the military, political and economic conditions of the deployment. After talks Saturday morning with Saddam's scientific adviser, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, Blix's deputy Perricos said the timetable for destroying all Iraq's Al Samoud 2s had been agreed upon. Al-Taie saud the two sides agreed on where and how missiles would be destroyed. Next week, Blix will address the deeply divided U.N. Security Council, which is considering the U.S.-led resolution authorizing war and, at the same time, a French-led proposal to continue with inspections. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia would veto the U.S. resolution if needed to preserve "international stability." In a 13-page report delivered to the U.N. Security Council on Friday, Blix was highly critical of Iraq's overall disarmament efforts in the last three months, calling them "very limited so far." But the report was written before the two latest developments, and Blix said a shift in Iraq's compliance could change the tone of his address to the Security Council. Blix ordered the missiles' destruction after examining data from 40 test flights. In 13 of them, the missile flew farther than the 93-mile limit set by U.N. resolutions after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites). In 27 test flights, the missile flew below the limit. Iraq called the order unjust, saying some missiles overshot the limit only because they were tested without warheads or guidance systems. But Baghdad consented because "we want to remove any pretext that there may be to wage aggression against Iraq," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Friday. Inspectors returned Saturday to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991. At the site, bulldozers moved mounds of earth to reveal rusty, dirt-caked warheads and bomb fragments, some as large as cars. Nearby, missiles bearing U.N. identification tags rusted in a parched field. ======================================================================== Comment #1. Blix ordering the destruction of those missiles when a mere 13 out of 40 flew over the limit and only without warheads and without guidance systems shows that he is not really the wimp that right wing war advocates have us to believe. Comment #2. Progress is slower than wanted, but it is obvious that it is being made. Would more progress be made with doubling inspections? I believe it would. Comment #3. Given the progress as well as the cost of the war, the number of countries against it, etc, shouldn't inspection options be given more of a chance than this administration seems willing to give? Comment #4. Russia, France, and Germany are clearly going to block the security council from authorizing war right now. Given the world sentiment against war, the possibilities of mammoth unintended consequences, is a clear foreign policy shift to "strike first" justified, especially in light of recent progress? M