Posted on 01/29/2004 6:40:30 AM PST by areafiftyone
(Updates with comments on Saddam's trial, Iraq's unity)
By Anna Mudeva
SOFIA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Thursday Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which inspectors have failed to find, were carefully hidden but Hoshiyar Zebari said he was confident they could be discovered.
"I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward," Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, told a news conference in Sofia. "They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated."
The United States and Britain cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological arms as their main reason for invading the country last March and toppling Saddam. But no such weapons have so far come to light despite intensive searches.
Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said on Wednesday "we were almost all wrong" about the issue and it was "highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarised chemical and biological weapons" in Iraq.
But Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said: "We as Iraqis have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons of mass destruction against us. He hasn't denied that."
Zebari was apparently referring to the use of chemical weapons by Saddam's forces against Iraqi Kurdish villages in the late 1980s.
He reiterated the position of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council that Saddam, accused of sending thousands of Iraqis to mass graves, should be tried by an Iraqi court.
The former Iraqi president, who was given prisoner of war status, was captured in mid-December near his home town of Tikrit, having evaded U.S. forces since the American military launched its war in Iraq with a March 20 attack targeting him.
Zebari said Saddam's trial should be fair and transparent because it would be a test for Iraq's new rulers to prove their adherence to the supremacy of law.
TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY
Asked to comment on Turkey's fears Iraqi Kurds might seek a breakaway state, Zebari said there were no plans to divide Iraq.
"We have proved over the last nine months that all the Iraqis from the North to the South are committed to the national unity...No group, no party has any plans to undermine Iraq's unity or territorial integrity," he said.
U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he was also committed to a "territorially intact" Iraq.
Turkish officials have been concerned Iraqi Kurds might press for an independent state, which could boost independence claims by Turkey's own restive Kurdish minority.
The Kurds, who fought with the United States to topple Saddam, are one of Iraq's best organised ethnic groups after enjoying U.S-protected autonomy since the 1991 Gulf War. They have presented a plan to the Iraqi Governing Council that grants significant autonomy to the Kurdish region.
Zebari did not rule out the federalisation of Iraq as long as it did not violate territorial unity and added only the Iraqi people could choose the country's future political system.
Yep. And we have no way of knowing which it is. But I have supporting evidence backing up my theory.
The US and the UN both said that Saddam had tons of WMD destroyed at the end of the first gulf war. Was there more, who knows. Has he produced more in recent years? Kay didnt find any evidence that he had. Was he still researching WMD? Yes. Was he producing it? No evidence and Kay has done more research than anyone on Free Republic.
That's false, as the Kay interim report and his testimony both show.
If you know they exist, where are they (GPS coordinates please) and how did they get there? WHen did they get there and who controls them now? Humility knows no bounds when in support of ideology.
You said it, not me.
What is the big deal? Fact that there were no WMD doesnt mean that Bush lied or that the war was wrong. IF we find some fine. But I certainly wont base my support for the war on whether WMD is located or not. If someone is threatening us with WMD and isnt willing to come clean, then they can suffer the consequences. Looks more and more like Saddam was a total fool. He lost his kingdom over nothing.
Weak try, Dave, at best. You folks are the ones who know they don't exist. Yet you quickly realize you can't prove a negative, and many of you are often overwhelmed when the facts are presented to you. Yet rather than back off, you persist.
Yes, I do know the WMDs exist. I cannot even begin to tell you where they are. But I make a much stronger case for their existence than you ever could that they don't exist.
You think they all get their intel from independent sources? The services share information and there is no good reason to believe any of the services you mentioned had any better sources than we did.
You think they all take whatever another country tells them at face value without trying to corroborate? You really should give our intel folks a bit more credit. (I realize I'm asking a lot.)
Then why dont you accept Kay when he says there probably are no WMD in Iraq now and that there probably were none there in recent years? Duh, you seem a little inconsistent to me?
Everything in Iraq revolved around Saddam and his needs and desires. Saddam had more money than he could spend. He didnt need the extra oil revenue. He did need the fear that he thought WMD generated so that he could continue in power. He also couldnt afford to look weak to his people by backing down to the west and letting the inspectors in.
Coop would be screaming bloody murder over intelligence failure if Bill Clinton was still President.
And you have no WMD's and you have Kay saying that they probably never existed. Sorry, I go with Kay over you.
Read it again. Kay said that there was no evidence that Saddam had any stockpile of weapons like that outlined in Powell's speech to the UN. He had research programs, yeah. But that doesnt mean that he had stock piles of weapons.
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