Thursday, May 14, 2009

Hans Blix Finds No Smoking Guns in Iraq

The Washington Post
A01, Jan. 10, 2003


No 'Smoking Guns' So Far, U.N. Is Told Blix Says Iraq Failed to Provide Enough Data
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 9 -- Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that his investigators had uncovered no "smoking gun" evidence that Iraq has resumed its secret weapons programs, but he sharply criticized Baghdad for failing to adequately respond to questions about its previous arms programs or to supply a comprehensive list of Iraqi scientists engaged in weapons activities.

Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council in a closed meeting today that it will be impossible to give Iraq a clean bill of health unless it backs up its claim to have eliminated any previous programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

But the two men also urged the council to be patient, noting that it could be months before they can provide a definitive conclusion about whether Iraq has restarted its weapons programs. "We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns," Blix told reporters before briefing the council. "We think that the declaration failed to answer a great many questions."

The inability of the United Nations to obtain definitive evidence of new weapons activities in Iraq is complicating U.S. efforts to galvanize international support for the military overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Germany's U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, reflecting a widely shared view among the 15-nation council, said there were still "no grounds for military action" and that inspections should be given more time to succeed. A leading British newspaper reported that Britain is seeking to persuade Washington to delay the onset of a war with Iraq until the fall.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoing remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said today that Blix and ElBaradei will not be able to provide the council with a conclusive review of Iraq's efforts involving banned weapons by the time they are scheduled to present their first comprehensive assessment of those activities on Jan. 27. "We are just in the middle of the process," Blair said. Some senior U.S. officials had viewed the Jan. 27 presentation as a potential trigger for military action.

But Powell has played down the importance of the Jan. 27 assessment, saying Wednesday that "it is not necessarily a D-day for decision-making." Powell said that the United States could still make a case for military action against Iraq even if Blix fails to find hard evidence of arms violations. "You don't really have to have a smoking gun," he told NBC today.

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there," added White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke."

Still, the Bush administration seized on Blix's criticism of Iraq, insisting that Baghdad's latest failure to adequately cooperate with the inspectors or admit it possesses weapons of mass destruction constitutes a "further material breach" of its disarmament obligations and strengthens the case for military action.

"There is still no evidence that Iraq has fundamentally changed its approach from one of deception to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming in meeting the council's demand that it disarm," U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte told the council behind closed doors. "Iraq's cooperation with inspections to date has been legalistic and superficial; but it is far short of the genuine cooperation the council had demanded."

Senior Iraqi officials today denied that their lengthy weapons declaration was incomplete. "People who claim there are omissions in the report . . . are not fully acquainted with our voluminous declaration or they lost their way" reading it, Gen. Amir Saadi, Hussein's chief science adviser, said in Baghdad.

Blix indicated that the pace of inspections in Iraq would intensify as the inspectors increase their use of helicopters to conduct unannounced visits, establish a regional office in the southern city of Basra, and introduce reconnaissance planes to conduct high-altitude surveillance over Iraq.

Blix also plans to push Baghdad to make Iraqi scientists available for interviews without the presence of Iraqi authorities. But he insisted he would not "force anybody to go abroad or force them to defect."

The issue of interviews has been a source of friction between the United Nations and the United States, which believes that Iraqi scientists would speak freely only if they are interviewed abroad.

Blix has recently assured the United States that he would "use all of his authority" to elicit pertinent information on Iraq's weapons programs from Iraqi scientists, according to a senior U.S. official.

Although Blix stopped short of assuring Washington that he would exercise his right to conduct interviews abroad, American officials say they are confident he will do so. One U.S. official said that Washington and the United Nations are in the "final stages" of planning to carry out such interviews in Cyprus.

Blix and ElBaradei, who is scheduled to meet with Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Friday, said that they would travel to Baghdad on Jan. 19 and demand that Iraq provide a fuller account of its weapons programs.

"If evidence is not presented which gives a high degree of assurance, there is no way the inspectors can close a file by simply invoking a precept that Iraq cannot prove the negative," Blix said. "I have not asserted . . . that proscribed items or activities exist in Iraq, but if they do, Iraq should present them and then eliminate them in our presence. There is still time for it."

ElBaradei indicated to the council that he would press the United States to provide him with additional evidence to support U.S. and British allegations that Iraq tried to import uranium from an African supplier in 1991. In an effort to deflect growing criticism that it has failed to provide useful intelligence to the inspectors, Powell told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Washington has increased intelligence-sharing with the U.N. inspectors.

While acknowledging that Iraq has provided inspectors with unfettered access, Blix and ElBaradei delivered an unexpectedly tough account of Iraq's record of cooperation.

ElBaradei said that Iraq had so far failed to provide adequate documentation describing its efforts to design nuclear weapons and centrifuges used in the enrichment of uranium.

He also said that 32 tons of a high explosive, HMX, that can be used to detonate a nuclear explosive, had disappeared from a facility that had been subject to U.N. monitoring until 1998, when the inspectors left Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign. "Iraq . . . declared that it had blended the . . . 32 tons with sulfur and turned them into 45.6 tons of industrial explosive used mainly to cement plants for mining."

ElBaradei said that a preliminary investigation of Iraq's unsuccessful attempts to acquire large quantities of aluminum tubes yielded no evidence to support suspicions by some U.S. and British intelligence analysts that it may have been destined for a secret program to manufacture centrifuges.

"While the matter is still under investigation," ElBaradei told the council, "the IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."

Blix added to the criticism, faulting Iraq for failing to answer questions about its production of chemical and biological weapons in a 12,000-page declaration to the council last month.

He said the declaration "is rich in volume but poor in new information about weapons issues and practically devoid of new evidence on such issues." Said Blix, "In order to create confidence that it has no more weapons of mass destruction or proscribed activities relating to such weapons, Iraq must provide credible evidence."

Blix noted that comparison of Iraq's declaration and its previous statements revealed "several cases of inconsistencies."

He said Iraq provided contradictory information on its VX nerve agent program, further clouding the U.N. effort to understand how far Iraq got in placing the chemical agent in a weapon.

He noted that Baghdad has failed to provide a convincing explanation for Iraq's illegal acquisition of "a relatively large number of missile engines" and other raw material used to produce solid missile fuel.

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