- UNITED NATIONS/BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- U.N. inspectors on Thursday gave a mixed interim report on Iraq's arms
programs, providing ammunition both to those backing U.S. preparations
for a possible conflict and for the anti-war camp.
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- Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said his teams had
so far found no "smoking gun" but added Iraq had failed to answer
many questions about its armaments. Baghdad said it would do so.
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- Washington appeared unimpressed with Blix's double-edged
comments.
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- "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't
see their smoke," a White House spokesman told reporters. "We
know for a fact that there are weapons there." Blix's remarks, made
to reporters as he prepared to brief members of the U.N. Security Council,
were interpreted by the markets as making war more likely, and oil prices
quickly rose.
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- In the nearly seven weeks since inspections resumed in
Iraq, he said, "we have been covering the country in ever-wider sweeps,
and we haven't found any smoking guns."
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- But Blix, head of chemical, biological and ballistic
arms inspections, said he was dissatisfied with the 12,000-page document
Iraq submitted in December after the U.N. Security Council demanded it
give a full account of its arms programs.
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- "We think that the declaration failed to answer
a great many questions," Blix said."
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- He said it was up to Iraq to show it did not have banned
weapons, not for his staff to prove it did. "Iraq cannot just maintain
that it must be deemed to be without proscribed items as long as there
is no evidence to the contrary," he said.
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- Among suspected items unaccounted for in Iraq's declaration,
he said, were stocks of VX gas, imports of missile engines, ingredients
for production of missile fuel and chemical bombs.
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- The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte,
also insisted the burden of proof was on Iraq. "Anything less is not
cooperation and will constitute further material breach," he said.
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- Within hours, a senior Iraqi official said Iraq was ready
to answer questions over its declaration but added U.N. inspections had
vindicated its claim to have no banned arms. "We are ready to respond
to the questions which will be directed to us," Hussam Mohammed Amin
told a news conference in Baghdad.
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- ALUMINUM TUBES
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- The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the
U.N.'s nuclear watchdog which is separately responsible for investigating
nuclear-related activity in Iraq, was also reporting to the U.N. Security
Council on Thursday.
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- "To date, no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear
or nuclear-related activities has been detected, although not all of the
laboratory results of sample analysis are yet available," Mohamed
ElBaradei said.
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- He said aluminum tubes suspected of being part of an
Iraqi nuclear arms program were in fact unsuitable for that use.
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- The arms inspections in Iraq are based on a November
U.N. resolution which threatened the oil-rich state with "serious
consequences" if it failed to cooperate with the U.N. teams.
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- Washington and Britain, its staunchest ally, are anxious
to stress that the verdicts of inspectors are not necessarily a make-or-break
"trigger" for war.
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- British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his cabinet that
a January 27 formal progress report on inspections in Iraq should not be
regarded as a deadline for a decision on military action.
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- Secretary of State Colin Powell also tried to deflect
attention from January 27. "It is not necessarily a D-day for decision-making,"
Powell told the Washington Post.
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- Joschka Fischer, foreign minister of Security Council
member Germany, took Blix's remarks as support for its anti-war stance.
"It all points to the need for a continuation of inspections,"
he said, adding Berlin would do all it could to avert war.
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- But in Vilseck, Germany, the U.S. Army began sending
long lines of heavy tractors, bulldozers, cranes, trucks and other engineering
equipment for shipment to the Gulf from its Grafenwoehr training ground.
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- U.S. INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ
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- France called on the United States, Britain and others
to give the U.N. inspectors intelligence on where to find the weapons that
Washington insists Iraq is hiding.
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- Powell said Washington was doing so but had withheld
some of its most sensitive information. Iraq's al-Thawra newspaper, the
organ of President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, said the intelligence
did not exist, and accused Washington and London of forming an "axis
of deception."
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- Blix told Reuters his teams would begin interviewing
Iraqi experts about prohibited weapons within a week. He did not say whether
the Iraqis would be taken abroad for interview to protect them from reprisal,
as the United States has demanded.
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- Time magazine's Web site said inspectors would soon invite
Iraqi scientists to be interviewed abroad. In Baghdad, Amin said there
was no formal arrangement for experts to leave Iraq.
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- "It was an idea. There is nothing official presented
to us. It was an oral request by inspectors," Amin said. He added:
"I think nobody is ready to go outside to make an interview."
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- U.N. inspectors drove to at least seven sites in central
Iraq, on Thursday Iraqi officials said. But witnesses said helicopters
carrying inspectors had to turn back to Baghdad because of bad weather
in the northwest.
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- The United States and Britain continued to build up forces
in the Gulf. In a surge of U.S. deployments, defense officials said the
Air Force had begun sending dozens of B-1B bombers and fighter aircraft
to the region.
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