- Disturbing new evidence has emerged about Saddam Hussein's
nuclear arsenal as tension rises in the Middle East over an increasingly
aggressive Iraq.
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- According to two former senior scientists in the Iraqi
nuclear programme - corroborated by a former aide to Saddam's son Uday
- Iraq carried out a successful nuclear test before the Gulf war and now
has a nuclear stockpile.
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- The scientists describe in detail Iraq's nuclear programme.
They say Saddam carried out a nuclear test in September 1989 deep beneath
Lake Rezzaza, southwest of Baghdad. The blast was undetected because it
was relatively small - about equal to the Hiroshima bomb - and muffled.
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- Over the past decade, despite UN inspections, Saddam
has carried out further tests and now has several bombs stored in a bunker
under the Hamrin mountains north of Baghdad, they say.
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- Their claims, which are reported in today's News Review
section of The Sunday Times, challenge the consensus among the American,
British and Israeli intelligence services that Saddam does not have sufficient
enriched uranium or plutonium to fulfil his ambition of developing a nuclear
bomb.
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- Israel's prime minister-elect, Ariel Sharon, is expected
to warn Colin Powell, the visiting American secretary of state, during
talks today that the region may slide into war. Powell, who was in Egypt
yesterday, urged Arab countries to join America in countering the threat
posed by Saddam.
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- Israeli military sources say that Sharon has ordered
Shaul Mofaz, the chief of staff, to prepare the army for a pre-emptive
attack on Iraq's missile launch zone, which is close to its border with
Syria.
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- Resurrecting and developing plans from the Gulf war,
Sharon threatens to deploy tactical neutron bombs to "wipe out"
the launch zone in the event that intelligence reports say a non-conventional
weapons attack by Iraq is imminent, according to the sources.
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- Sources close to Sharon say he will tell Powell that
Israel would not sit still and wait for Iraqi missiles to rain down on
its towns, as it did in the 1991 Gulf war in reponse to American requests
for restraint.
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- On Thursday Israel placed its forces on high missile
alert after American intelligence warned about movements of Iraqi armoured
divisions close to the border with Syria. American satellites also picked
up preparations in the Iraqi long-range surface missiles brigade. Israeli
air force planes took off opposite the Syrian coast.
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- Almost at the same time, two American Awacs, four Hawkeye
spy planes and 36 assorted American and British fighter aircraft took off
from the Turkish base of Incirlik and from American carriers in the region.
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- They ran into fierce anti-aircraft missile fire from
batteries north of the Iraqi oil city of Mosul. The allied fighters blasted
the Iraqi batteries in return but caused little damage.
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- The next day, an Arabic-language Israeli newspaper published
a warning from Baghdad that "Iraq is about to hit Israel" and
"will liberate the occupied territories". An Israeli general,
formerly assistant to an Israeli prime minister, told The Sunday Times:
"It's hard to believe that Saddam will use non-conventional weapons
against Israel, but we failed to predict his moves in the past and we may
fail to do so in future."
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- The principal source of the new evidence about Saddam's
nuclear programme is a former military engineer, known as "Leone",
who says he worked for a special scientific department of the Republican
Palace in Baghdad, which supervised the development of Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction.
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- His claim is corroborated by a scientist from another
branch of the weapons programme and by Abbas al-Janabi, a former personal
assistant to Uday Hussein. "A nuclear test was carried out in 1988
or 1989 in an underground site beside Lake Rezzaza," said Janabi,
who claimed to have been in the test cavern before the explosion. Satellite
images from 1989 show a huge tunnel at the site.
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- Last month, another former engineer from the weapons
programme, now in hiding, said Saddam had two "fully operational"
nuclear bombs.
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- Western intelligence officers who have heard Leone's
claims say he is well informed, but they insist there is no evidence that
Iraq could obtain sufficient enriched nuclear fuel. Leone and his corroborators
say that the fuel was smuggled in from South Africa via Brazil.
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- Gwynne Roberts, a film-maker who has investigated Leone's
story, said: "Something very unusual happened on the shores of Lake
Rezzaza prior to the Gulf war, which was completely missed by western intelligence
agencies."
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- Comment
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- From John Lawe
johndl@istal.com
2-25-1
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- I'm afraid this is a hoax- by whom, I don't know. It
is just propaganda, nothing more. This is similar to an earlier hoax report
that Iraq had two nuclear bombs; that report also originated in England,
from www.telegraph.co.uk. It's also significant that the two stories don't
match up very well.
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- First, why is this story is only now coming to light-
and just after Bush, who has promised to "deal with Saddam" became
President?
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- Second, who are the sources for this story? If they exist,
then obviously Saddam knows they defected, so their identities are not
being hidden from Iraq; what is the reason for keeping their names out
of the story? And if indeed they are "two former senior scientists
in the Iraqi nuclear programme - corroborated by a former aide to Saddam's
son Uday" they can only be from of a handful of top Iraqis, and thereby
must be _clearly_ identifiable.
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- Third, earthquake monitoring stations world-wide would
have detected the blast, and located it with precision- no matter how well
it was "muffled." An atomic blast, even a very small one, liberates
tremendous amounts of energy; there is _always_ a tremor associated with
an underground blast. And monitoring equipment is extremely sensitive.
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- And are we to believe that Saddam carried out _further_
tests during the time when the entire country was being intensively monitored
by aircraft, satellite, UN inspectors, and spies from several different
nations? With his civilian and military infrastructure smashed to bits
by the war? Come now.
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- Do we also blindly accept that Israel, one of the most
technologically advanced nations on this planet, would not have in place
the very most sensitive instruments, and a well developed spy ring, just
to watch out for exactly this sort of development? And then somehow miss
not one, but "several" tests? Nonsense! There is NO scenario
whereby Israel would have waited this long to deal with the matter, no
matter what the political consequences.
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- The story is garbage.
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- John Lawe.
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- Comment
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- From David
heros@qwest.net
2-26-1
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- Dear Jeff,
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- I agree with John Lawe that the Iraqi-built nuclear bomb
story is garbage; that doesn't mean that Iraq doesn't have the bomb. We
just finished the most corrupt administration in American history. The
bankers want their total world control. Saddam was left to live for another
day. The bankers in New York dictate and Russia complies. Russia would
sell a bomb to Frankenstein. A mideast war could stop the oil that poor
oil-dependent America needs to run the golden goose. Why did our hidden
rulers keep us on the Middle East teat? What is Kissinger over there for?
Not peace!
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- Best wishes,
David
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