Replies

Here's the A/P article I found on the DMN. A little different take, just fyi:

Secrets to be excised from Iraq report

12/07/2002

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - Iraq on Saturday will hand over more than 10,000 pages detailing its chemical, biological and nuclear programs, including sensitive material that will not be shared with the United States or other governments, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said.

The United States and other U.N. Security Council members decided Friday that the material - which could include "recipes" for chemical and biological weapons - should be kept secret even from the council itself lest it fall into the wrong hands.

As a result, inspectors plan to weed out the sensitive details as well as translate the Arabic sections before giving the declaration to the council, U.N. officials said. The declaration is expected to be delivered to inspectors in Baghdad on Saturday at 8 p.m. (11 a.m. Dallas time) and then couriered to U.N. headquarters in New York on Sunday, the deadline for its arrival.

Also Online

	Full Text: U.S. draft resolution on Iraq

	Special report: Iraq

The declaration is a crucial requirement that Iraq must meet, and Security Council members and weapons experts will be combing it to assess whether Baghdad is telling the truth. Omissions or false statements, coupled with any Iraqi failure to cooperate with weapons inspectors, could trigger war.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri said the report would reflect Iraq's long-standing contentions that it is free of weapons of mass destruction, although it will also contain some "new elements," which he did not disclose.

Bush administration officials are sure Iraq has such weapons, and on Thursday the White House said "solid evidence" would be turned over to U.N. inspectors.

On Friday, the White House said it wanted the U.N. weapons inspection team to aggressively court Iraqi scientists with promises of safety and asylum in exchange for evidence against Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.

A closer look

INSPECTION OPERATION

A glance at the United Nations' weapons inspection operation in Iraq:

THE INSPECTORS

More than two dozen inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and the New York-based U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission are in Iraq. The international agency's Iraq Action Team includes 15 experts from 11 countries. About 30 more inspectors are expected to arrive next week, and by month's end, a total of 80-100 should be in place, the agency says.

THE FILES

The international agency, which is leading the hunt for nuclear weapons, has not said how many pages of information are in its databases, but it has compiled hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from past inspections.

The U.N. monitoring board, overseeing the search for biological and chemical agents, says it has more than 1 million pages in its database.

THE IRAQIS

The Iraqi government's declaration of its weapons programs, which is to be handed over to U.N. officials by a Sunday deadline, must be checked against both databases. Chief inspector Hans Blix said he understood the Iraqi report would be in Arabic and English and contain more than 10,000 pages.

SOURCE: Associated Press

"We take the issue very seriously and attach great importance to it. We hope the international community would also attach the same importance to the issue," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters.

But Dr. Blix, the 74-year-old Swede who heads the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, was unmoved.

"We are not going to abduct anybody, and we're not serving as a defection agency," he said.

Under the latest Security Council resolution, Iraq must submit an "accurate, full, and complete declaration" of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Iraqi officials last month complained about the scope of this demand, saying it would even cover petrochemical industry production of plastic sandals.

Iraqi officials have called a news conference Saturday morning in Baghdad to discuss the report, which Mr. Al-Douri said would contain "a huge amount of information." Several diplomats said they were told the declaration weighs about 130 pounds.

The material, which may include computer disks, will cover the 1991-98 history of U.N. weapons and equipment destruction and "new elements" relating to dual-use sites and activities.

Dr. Blix had called on the Iraqis to examine their "stocks and stores" before declaring they had no prohibited weapons left. But Mr. Al-Douri was adamant Friday that Iraq no longer had any.

"We said again and again that we have no more destruction weapons at all. Everything has been destroyed, and we have no intention to do that again," the Iraqi envoy said. "If the Americans have this evidence, they have to tell the inspectors in Iraq to go find this evidence."

Meanwhile, U.S. and U.N. officials cautioned that the Iraqi declaration would take time to translate and analyze.

A U.S. official in Washington told The Associated Press that the declaration would be distributed first to the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, the permanent Security Council members, and then to the 10 other members.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the process could take about a week.

The inspectors hope the Iraqis at least will help them answer some open questions by supplying convincing documentation on the fate of 550 artillery shells filled with poisonous mustard gas. Iraqi and U.N. accounts contain many such discrepancies from the 1990s.

Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/120702dnintiraq.a658c.html