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To: Snowshoe who wrote (27721)	8/14/1998 12:10:00 PM
From: Captain James T. Kirk	Respond to of 95453

Clinton boys have no balls !! :Friday August 14 6:51 AM EDT Report: U.S. tried to halt surprise Iraq arms checks WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clinton administration intervened secretly for months to dissuade U.N. weapons teams from conducting surprise inspections in Iraq because it wanted to avoid a new crisis, the Washington Post reported Friday. The newspaper, quoting U.S. and diplomatic sources, said the American interventions included an Aug. 4 telephone call between Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Richard Butler, executive chairman of the U.N. Special Commission responsible for Iraq's disarmament. During the call Albright urged Butler to rescind closely held orders for the team to mount ''challenge inspections'' at two sites where intelligence leads suggested they could uncover forbidden weapons components and documents describing Iraqi efforts to conceal them, the Post said, quoting sources it did not name but were, it said, familiar with the call. After a second high-level contact with Washington last Friday, Butler canceled the special inspection and ordered his team to leave Baghdad. U.N. special envoy Prakash Shah returned to Baghdad Thursday to urge the Iraqi government to resume cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors which it suspended a week ago. Iraq announced last week it was suspending its cooperation with UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until UNSCOM was restructured to reduce U.S. influence and UNSCOM's headquarters was moved from New York to either Geneva or Vienna. International sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until the U.N. Security Council is satisfied that all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. Iraq insisted this has already been achieved and demanded an end to the embargo. Washington and other western powers indicated they want a political rather than a military solution to the latest standoff with Iraq, signaling a retreat from the United States' vow six months ago to strike immediately and with significant military force if Iraq failed to honor a Feb. 23 agreement that resolve the last such crisis over inspections. Albright issued a one-sentence statement through a spokesman late Thursday: ''U.S. policy has been to fully support UNSCOM in its inspections and I have never told Ambassador Butler how to do his job,'' according to the Post. Butler told the Post any suggestion that he received orders from Albright would be a ''a very considerable distortion of what took place. No member of the (Security Council), including the United States, has purported to give me instructions. They all recognize that their job is policy, my job is operations.'' Butler's team began planning in June to conduct surprise raids at two sites where they believed they would find evidence of forbidden chemical and biological weapons and the ballistic missiles capable of deploying them. He dispatched senior aides to London and Washington in late June to give highly classified briefings on the raids. Both acknowledged UNSCOM's right to make its own decisions, but worked in concert to dissuade him from going ahead. Derek Plumbly, head of the British Foreign Office's Middle East Command, met on July 15 with Butler, telling him it was not time for a provocative challenge to Iraq, the Post said. Shortly after that meeting, U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, the second-ranking delegate to the United Nations, called in Butler for a consultation in which he raised a long list of U.S. questions about the planned raids, the newspaper said.

To: Snowshoe who wrote (27721)	8/14/1998 12:12:00 PM
From: Captain James T. Kirk	Respond to of 95453

Who do you belive ? White House Denies Iraq Report ROBERT BURNS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials ''consulted with'' the U.N. special commission responsible for Iraq's disarmament but did not direct the commission not to conduct a surprise inspection in Iraq, a White House official said today. The Washington Post reported today that as recently as Aug. 7, members of the Clinton administration tried to discourage U.N. weapons inspectors from carrying out ''challenge inspections'' in Iraq out of fear of provoking a showdown with Saddam Hussein. The Post, citing American and diplomatic sources, said the United States has tried over the course of months to persuade the inspection team to back down from mounting surprise raids. At the White House today, press secretary Mike McCurry denied the United States had attempted to stop U.N. inspections. McCurry said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright intended to publicly address the matter today. ''She will deny that we have directed UNSCOM (the U.N. Special Commission) not to conduct inspections because that's not our role,'' McCurry said. Asked whether U.S. officials at least suggested to U.N. officials that certain inspections be delayed or stopped, McCurry said, ''We consulted with them about the best way to conduct their mission - timing, outcomes, best way of achieving their mission. But we don't order them not to conduct missions.'' According to the Post account, Albright in an Aug. 4 telephone conversation urged Richard Butler, head of the U.N. commission, to withdraw orders for inspections at two key sites. Intelligence leads had suggested they would find forbidden weapons components and documents describing Iraqi efforts to conceal them at the sites, the Post reported. Butler canceled the special inspection and ordered his team to leave Baghdad, after receiving a second warning from high-level officials last Friday, the Post reported. Butler told the paper that suggestions that he received orders from Albright were ''a very considerable distortion of what took place.'' ''No member of the (Security) Council, including the United States, has purported to give me instructions. They all recognize that their job is policy, my job is operation,'' he said. Albright, in a one-sentence statement to the Post Thursday night, denied that she had tried to instruct Butler how to do his job. ''U.S. policy has been to fully support UNSCOM in its inspections and I have never told Ambassador Butler how to do his job,'' she said. At the State Department, spokesman James Foley said today that Albright ''has never told Chairman Butler how to conduct his investigations.'' A U.N. envoy, Prakash Shah, carried a letter Thursday from Kofi Annan, the U.N. chief, to the Iraq leadership. Shah would not disclose the contents, but U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan would ask Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, to reverse his decision not to cooperate with inspectors. At the height of a crisis over weapons inspections last February, the U.N. secretary-general personally had brokered an agreement with Saddam that included a pledge by Iraq to fully cooperate. Asked by reporters what the Clinton administration believed it could do to ensure that inspections are resumed, White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said the president was relying on Annan's persuasion. ''(Shah) will urge Iraq to resume that cooperation, and he will forcefully communicate, you know, this violates both Security Council resolutions, and the memorandum of understanding that Kofi Annan negotiated personally with Iraq,'' Crowley said. Crowley reiterated the administration's view that Saddam is obligated to permit unfettered U.N. inspections. Iraq must destroy its prohibited weapons before the Security Council will lift economic sanctions, Crowley said. The sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which set off the 1991 Gulf War. ''We have been encouraging Saddam Hussein for eight years now to do a very simple thing, which is declare fully his weapons of mass destruction capability,'' Crowley said. ''And he knows exactly what he is expected to do. As we've said before, you know this has been a cat-and-mouse game that we've experienced in the past with Iraq. We're not going to play his game.'' I DON"T SEE ANY SURPRISE INSPECTIONS. THUS I BELIVE THE CLINTON ADMIN IS CHICKEN !!