Regards, Ivan
Posted on 01/18/2003 4:38:12 PM PST by MadIvan
UNITED NATIONS weapons inspectors in Iraq revealed last night that they had discovered 3,000 documents linked to nuclear arms technology while searching a scientist's house.
The documents were recovered from the home of Faleh Hassan, an Iraqi physicist and director of a military installation west of Baghdad. Mohamed El Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Hassan's papers related to a laser technique for enriching uranium, a component of nuclear weapons.
If Iraq had not previously disclosed the technique, he said, "it obviously doesn't show the transparency we've been preaching". He added: "Why should these documents be in a private home? Why are they not giving them to us?"
Hassan, 55, protested about "mafia-like" behaviour by the inspectors, saying they had used his wife's illness to persuade him to leave Iraq for questioning. He claimed the documents were from his private research and the doctoral theses of some of his students.
However, El Baradei indicated that the papers, dating from the 1980s, could be connected with a nuclear programme. "We know it has got something to do with laser enrichment," he said.
The disclosure came as it emerged that other Iraqi weapons scientists had been forced to produce lists identifying scores of their relatives in an attempt to intimidate them before any interviews this week with UN inspectors.
The lists were compiled so that scientists from Saddam Hussein's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes would be left in no doubt about the consequences of co-operating with the UN, a senior defector said.
"The message was clear — if you talk, we know your family," said the defector, a former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer.
"It is called the Six List — it means you will lose your family down to the sixth cousin if you reveal information. For some of the scientists it took three days to write the list because Iraqi families are very big."
The scientists were also quizzed late last year by Iraqi security agents who rehearsed them for inspectors' questions to ensure they would not reveal sensitive information.
The disclosures, confirmed by the opposition Iraqi National Congress and western sources, cast renewed doubt over whether Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, will be able to obtain secrets directly from the scientists.
Blix arrives today in Iraq, where his inspectors have widened their searches to include a hunt for a mobile biochemical weapons laboratory. MI6 has told them it may contain the means to produce anthrax and botulinum toxin.
Unmovic, the UN inspection team, hopes to fly weapons scientists and their immediate families out of Iraq this week for questioning, perhaps at a British base in Cyprus.
However, the Iraqi regime insists no scientist is willing to leave.
This weekend American intelligence officers were investigating a report that a senior official in Iraq's ministry of industry and military industrialisation, which oversees weapons production, had been killed. He had been trying to flee the country for Jordan with his wife and two children a week ago, but had been stopped.
"He was trying to leave with information, but the Mukhabarat [intelligence service] are watching him and all people like him," said an Iraqi source opposed to the regime. "They brought him back to Baghdad. We think he [was] executed." There has been no confirmation of the claim.
Growing evidence that the Iraqis are obstructing UN inquiries was acknowledged yesterday by Blix as America and Britain stepped up their preparations for war. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, will announce this week that 14,000 more British troops are being sent to the Gulf, including the "Desert Rats" of the 7th Armoured Brigade.
Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets in Europe, America and Asia yesterday, but President George W Bush said he would lead a "coalition of the willing" if Iraq did not disarm.
Blix said on the eve of his talks with officials in Baghdad: "Iraq has not co-operated sufficiently with the United Nations weapons inspectors, and we will impress the seriousness of the situation to them."
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, will launch a diplomatic drive at the UN to persuade the security council that Iraq has fallen short of the requirements for disarmament stipulated in resolution 1441.
US officials have begun to argue that no further proof is needed for Iraq to be declared in "material breach" of the resolution. Hoon said last night inspectors do not need to find a "smoking gun" proving Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction in order to trigger war.
He said it could be enough for the inspection teams to obtain "persuasive evidence" that Saddam still has nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to warrant military strikes.
Tony Blair briefed ministers in cabinet on Thursday that the intelligence services believe Saddam is continually moving weapons around Iraq to avoid detection.
Blix will present an interim report to the security council on January 27 and Bush is expected to set out an argument for an early strike on Baghdad in his annual state of the union address the following day.
Regards, Ivan
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We've given the UN and inspectors their chance. We've done everything the peaceniks have asked.
Now its time to get busy.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE! One would never think that a tyrant would stoop so low!/sarcasm
I'm glued to to info network as to see the outcome of this!
Thanks for the post, Ivan.
Well-wishers wave Union flags as the HMS Ark Royal sails out of Portsmouth Harbor, January 11, 2003. The flagship of Britain's Navy set sail for possible war in Iraq at the head of the largest UK amphibious task force deployed since the 1982 Falklands War. Photo by John Pryke/Reuters
Thanks!
tick..tick..tick..tick..tick..
LVM
Outfoxed by "strategery" again. The Lefties must be foaming at the mouth.
Regards, Ivan
Also this FR article...
And the peacenicks worship this guy. Go figure.
Iraq - the leftist liberal utopia.
In other words, Bush knows these liberal extremists have nothing in their heads but dust. Thank God they don't run the free world!
LVM
They worshipped Stalin and Mao as well.
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