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

To: maceng2 who wrote (94974)	4/21/2003 10:47:53 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 281500

UN inspectors could have role in Iraq arms hunt, says Foreign Office from pa news timesonline.co.uk Discoveries of suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will be independently verified, the Government insisted today. The Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien sought to allay fears that United Nations inspection teams would not have a role in investigating chemical or biological weapons finds. “We need to have some element of independent verification,” Mr O’Brien told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The UN inspectors are clearly a possibility for doing that. We are talking to the Americans and other allies and indeed the UN about how verification can be carried out. “At the moment we are ready to operate under Nato procedures and we will send samples of material that we find to laboratories that will be able to properly analyse it under independent verification techniques.” American and British forces, rather than UN inspectors, are to examine 146 possible sites of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, although Mr O’Brien said fewer than a dozen had so far been visited. Although no “smoking gun” had yet materialised, the minister said it was an “absolute fact” that there were weapons hidden by Saddam Hussein’s regime. “We are confident that there are weapons of mass destruction,” he added. “Obviously the suspected presence of WMD is at the heart of our reasons for taking military action against the Iraqi regime. “Coalition forces now have a range of specialist plans and capabilities for identifying, surveying and securing sites where WMD have been developed, manufactured or used.” But he warned: “I think progress is bound to be slow.” The UN would also have a role in the political rebuilding of Iraq, but not in maintaining security, Mr O’Brien said. Mr O’Brien rejected calls from backbenchers for the parliamentary intelligence committee to hold an inquiry into the nature of intelligence about WMD before the war began. Mr O’Brien visited Syria last week to seek assurances from President Bashar Assad that his country would help, not hinder, the rebuilding of Iraq. Damascus has been accused by Washington of allowing volunteers to cross the border into Iraq to fight the coalition. President Assad declared the 400-mile border closed on April 7. “I think President Assad understand our concerns and I am hopeful that he will respond to them,” Mr O’Brien added. “It is certainly the case that many of the volunteers have gone across and have been involved in action against British and US soldiers. “We very much regret that and I have made that clear to President al-Assad. I hope that during the course of the coming months and indeed years they will assist the transition to democracy in Iraq rather than hindering it in any way.”