Gideon Alon
Ha'aretz Correspondent, and Ha'aretz Service
Saddam Hussein transferred chemical and biological weapons to Syria that Iraq wanted to hide, according to information Israel has received, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday evening. Sharon, who spoke on Channel Two, said Israel was checking the information.
Also Tuesday, Labor spokesmen said that remarks made earlier in the day by Military Intelligence chief Major General Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) on a possible United States attack on Iraq indicate that Sharon and his aides are using the issue to sow fear in the Israeli public and deflect its attention from the police investigation on irregularities in the Likud primaries.
Ze'evi told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he expects the United States to attack Iraq in the beginning of February, shortly after the American government reviews the United Nations inspectors' weapons report expected to be presented by January 27.
Ze'evi also said that in contrast with the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq has not issued particularly harsh statements against Israel. Instead, Iraq has issued general statements saying that it will attack whomever attacks it first.
Labor chairman Amram Mitzna said that, "Sharon is sowing seeds of war" and that "the photographs in which he is pictured with gas masks are a political spin, and are the seeds of war scattered by [Arthur] Finkelstein to create headlines that will shift attention away from corruption in the Likud."
According to Haim Ramon, who is the Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and who also serves on Labor's information committee, Sharon's visit to a Home Front Command base on Monday was part of a campaign tour. Ramon said that it is known that the chances of Iraq hitting Israel are low, and therefore the public's feeling of panic should be reduced.
Ze'evi also said that Al-Qaida has changed its pattern and is now focusing on Jewish and Israeli targets.
UN sources said this week that Iraq's account of its weapons arsenal failed to include information on 6,000 chemical warfare bombs. The account of the missing bombs, contained in the so-called "Air Force document," first came to light in July 1998. A UN inspector saw the six-page document and took a few notes before it was snatched from her hands during a 16-hour inspection search and standoff at the Air Force headquarters.
After withholding the Air Force document since then, Iraqi officials handed it over to a UN inspector in Baghdad on November 30. But Iraq gave no explanation for the missing weapons in its cover letter or in the 12,000-page weapons declaration submitted a week later, the sources said.