IRAQ REMOVES ENGINES FROM DESTROYED AL SAMOUDS

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iraq deceived the United Nations in its current effort to destroy the Al Samoud missile.

U.S. officials said the regime of President Saddam Hussein has not destroyed any Al Samoud missile deployed in forward bases in southern Iraq. Instead, they said, Iraq has brought out missiles from military warehouses and replaced the engines with those from the Soviet-origin SA-2 surface-to-air missile, developed in the 1950s.

"From recent intelligence, we know that the Iraqi regime intends to declare and destroy only a portion of its banned Al Samoud inventory and that it has, in fact, ordered the continued production of the missiles that you see being destroyed," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday. "Iraq has brought its machinery that produces such missiles out into the daylight for all to see. But we have intelligence that says, at the very same time, it has also begun to hide machinery it can use to convert other kinds of engines to power Al Samouds."

Iraq has declared that it has 100 Al Samoud missiles, half of them deployed by the military. So far, the UN Monitoring,Verification, and Inspection Commission reports that 34 such missiles have been destroyed.

UN supervises destruction of six more Iraqi missiles as inspections continue

UN inspectors in Iraq
8 March – United Nations weapons experts today supervised the destruction of additional Iraqi missiles as the international disarmament probe continued in the country.

There were warheads in three of the six Al Samoud 2 missiles destroyed at the Taji Technical Battalion, according to Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"This brings to 40 the total number of Al Samoud 2 missiles destroyed to date," Mr. Ueki noted, adding that another missile team today visited the Al Samoud Factory, where tools and special equipment to produce the Al Samoud-2 engine were destroyed.

Other UN missile experts visited the Al Qa Qaa complex to verify the emptying and tagging of warheads for Al Samoud 2 missiles.

Also today, UNMOVIC conducted a private interview with an Iraqi scientist – the eighth such interview since 28 February. "During this period, four private interviews did not take place due to the conditions imposed by the Iraqi interviewees," Mr. Ueki said.

Meanwhile, an UNMOVIC biological team returned to the Al Aziziyah Airfield and Firing Range, where it continued to supervise the excavation of R-400 bombs. "The team took additional samples from the remainders of the stainless steel containers that, Iraq has stated, had been used to transport biological agents," the spokesman reported.

An UNMOVIC chemical team inspected a sulphuric acid plant in the Al Qa Qaa complex, while an UNMOVIC multidisciplinary team inspected the "Yellow Corn Workshop /Al Haydaria" located approximately 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The nuclear probe also continued, with an IAEA team inspecting a military factory being built by the SAAD Company south of Baghdad as well as high explosives-related sites in the same area.

In addition, the IAEA inspected the Sahal Al Din Company, which produces military electronic equipment, and in a separate action conducted a radiation survey 30 kilometres northwest of Baghdad.

March 9, 2003

Iraq demands U.N. lifting of sanctions

From combined dispatches
BAGHDAD — Iraq yesterday called on the United Nations to remove 12 years of sanctions "totally and comprehensively" and ban weapons of mass destruction in the entire Middle East, especially in Israel — and eventually in the United States.
Baghdad said the latest weapons inspectors' reports showed the country has fulfilled its disarmament commitments.
Iraq resumed destroying banned Al Samoud 2 missiles under U.N. supervision yesterday, crushing six more after taking a day off on Friday.
In a statement after a meeting chaired by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leadership made a set of demands that it said the U.N. Security Council should implement after Friday's reports by chief U.N. weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei.
"The embargo against Iraq should be lifted totally and comprehensively after America's motives were revealed to the world and after Iraq abided by [U.N.] Security Council resolutions," the statement said.
Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions since 1990 for its invasion of Kuwait.
Iraqis, who once enjoyed wealth from a booming oil economy, have been reduced to penury with a large proportion of the country's 25 million people suffering from malnutrition.
Most Iraqis now live on food handouts provided by the government, which in 1996 was allowed by the United Nations to sell oil to buy food and medicine to alleviate the suffering of its people.
The statement also demanded that the Security Council denounce the United States and Britain as "liars," strip Israel of its suspected weapons of mass destruction and force it to pull out of "Palestine and occupied Arab land."
"At the front of those that must be rid of these weapons is the Zionist entity," the statement said in a reference to Israel, adding that the order should "move on after this region to America."
The meeting was attended by members of the ruling Ba'ath party, the Revolutionary Command Council and the parliament speaker.
The Iraqi statement said Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei had testified that Iraq was sincere and implementing Security Council resolutions accurately.
"After the stage that Iraq had reached in implementing the commitments defined by the Security Council ... the world, its peoples and most of its governments have come to realize the real aims of the American administration," the statement said.
On Friday, Mr. Blix told the U.N. Security Council Iraq's cooperation fell short of council demands but applauded Baghdad's scrapping of al-Samoud 2 missiles.
The inspectors, however, questioned Iraq's motivation, as it began to give the inspectors what they wanted only when the threat of war became immediate.
Mr. Blix also documented lingering questions about the Iraqi weapons program in a 173-page dossier, which said Baghdad may still possess about 10,000 liters of anthrax, Scud missile warheads and drones capable of flying far beyond a 93-mile limit.
President Bush said the inspectors' reports indicated that only a war will make Iraq give up its banned weapons.
"Unfortunately, it is clear that Saddam Hussein is still violating the demands of the United Nations by refusing to disarm," he told Americans in a radio address yesterday.
In the past week, Iraq has destroyed 40 of its 100 Al Samoud 2 missiles, prohibited by the United Nations because some tests indicated they could fly farther than a U.N.-imposed limit of 93 miles. It also has been destroying equipment used to make them.
U.N. inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said Iraqi workers crushed six Al Samoud 2 missiles yesterday at the al-Taji military complex north of Baghdad, under the supervision of weapons inspectors. Three of the missiles had warheads and three didn't.
Inspectors also supervised the destruction of tools and "special equipment used to produce the Al Samoud 2 engine" at the Al Samoud factory, he said, and another group of inspectors verified the emptying of Al Samoud 2 warheads at the Qa Qa complex just south of Baghdad.
Odai al-Taie, a senior Information Ministry official, said the workers crushing the missiles took Friday off because they had worked Tuesday, the Muslim new year. Mr. Ueki described Friday as a "planning day" for teams working on missile destruction.
Mr. Ueki said an Iraqi chemical scientist granted an interview to weapons inspectors, bringing to eight the number of scientists who have given interviews since Feb. 28, when Iraq began urging them to talk.
Since the same date, four scientists have refused.
Interviews with nuclear scientists have been conducted more frequently because the nuclear inspectors don't mind the scientists tape-recording the interviews, a sticking point for the chemical and biological teams.

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