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Gold/Mining/Energy : ARAKIS: HIGH RISK OIL PLAY (AKSEF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LARRY LARSON who wrote (7774)	2/15/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Respond to of 9164

Larry, Honestly, I think that the April Peace talks scheduled for Nairobi, will make progress toward settlement of the outstanding issues. Also there is no fighting in the Bentiu Region and IMO, there will likely be none..... However realize that the fighting around Wau is just Phase One of the Spring Fighting for both sides. And if there is a chemical weapons plant around Wau- well we should get some confirmation shortly... Here's another post which confirms your post of last night Larry, and adds a few more details on Sudan and Libya hiding Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons.... Iraq Hid Deadly Weapons Abroad - Congress Report 05:03 p.m Feb 15, 1998 Eastern By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq has smuggled deadly weapons programs to sympathetic Arab states for safekeeping along with up to 400 Scud missiles that could deliver germ or chemical agents, the director of a U.S. congressional task force said Sunday. Yossef Bodansky, director of the House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, said Iraq also retained production capabilities for weapons of mass destruction through joint programs in Sudan and Libya. About 400 surviving Iraqi Scud missiles of a type that could be used to deliver such weapons were shipped to Sudan and Yemen after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bodansky said. In a telephone interview, he said his information, first published in a Feb. 10 task force report, came from Arab opposition movements as well as from British, German and Israeli intelligence sources. Defense Secretary William Cohen said ''whether the report is accurate or not, it does in fact, I think, just by surfacing, give some validity to what we have been trying to accomplish'' -- getting full access to suspected weapons sites in Iraq. Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat who heads the United Nations weapons inspection effort, said the ''logic'' of the alleged Iraqi weapons shifting was clear. ''That could only have been the case under circumstances where we weren't there first,'' he said on the CNN program ''Late Edition,'' adding: ''That's why access is crucial.'' At issue is Iraq's defiance of U.N. Security Council disarmament resolutions that ended the 1991 Gulf War, including those meant to give inspectors' unrestricted access to suspected weapons sites. Iraq denies having any hidden weapons of mass destruction. It has sought to limit U.N. inspections of ''presidential sites,'' including Saddam's palaces and what it calls other symbols of national sovereignty. In Baghdad, General Amir Al Sa-adi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein, denied the report and heaped scorn on Butler. ''This is absolute nonsense. None of this has happened,'' he told reporters in a news conference carried live by CNN. U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said Sunday that the United States would strike Iraq militarily time and again if necessary to deny Saddam his deadliest weapons. ''We will do what we can at this point as far as diminishing his capacity'' to build weapons of mass destruction, he said of a looming round of possible U.S. and British military strikes. ''But we would make it clear that if we have evidence he is rebuilding (after the possible next U.S.-led strike), we would act again,'' Berger added on the NBC program ''Meet the Press.'' Berger, President Bill Clinton's top national security aide, suggested that the threatened U.S.-led military action may still be at least one week away in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors. ''I would say it's not measured in days but it's also not measured in months,'' he said. He accused Saddam of having used chemical weapons 10 times since 1983. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican on the Armed Services Committee, urged Clinton to set a deadline for full Iraqi compliance with Security Council resolutions that ended the 1991 Gulf War. ''... We just can't keep up this kind of ... back and forth,'' he said on Fox News Sunday. ''It continues to erode our capability.'' If Iraq fails to cooperate fully with the weapons dismantling teams, Berger said the United States would do ''as much as we can'' to curb its ability to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well to limit its capacity to threaten its neighbors. Cohen, preparing the public for military action, displayed a picture of the broken bodies of a mother and her infant child he identified as Iraqi Kurdish victims of a nerve agent. ''Madonna and child, Saddam Hussein-style,'' Cohen intoned, holding up the picture on the the ABC program ''This Week.''