The Boston Globe November 28, 2002
No hitch as inspectors begin searching Iraq
By Elizabeth Neuffer and Raja Mishra
UNITED NATIONS - UN arms experts yesterday carried out their first inspections in Iraq in four years, inaugurating a fresh search for banned weapons of mass destruction that could determine whether the United States goes to war against Iraq.
The UN weapons inspectors fanned out in white jeeps to two areas just outside Baghdad, searching a missile engine-testing facility, a graphite plant, and a science complex. An air-raid siren howled hours after the inspection began - followed by an all-clear - but the inspections unfolded without incident, UN officials in Iraq said.
One team of UN nuclear inspectors spent the morning at Al-Tahadi, a research center 6 miles east of Baghdad, chatting with staff and touring workshops. A second team of chemical, biological, and weapons experts visited the Al-Rafah military production complex 25 miles west of Baghdad, checking files and photographing documents. "I think the Iraqis are in a mood to want to be helpful," Hans Blix, the head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told reporters at the UN. "That's a good start."
Yesterday's inspections mark the start of what is likely to be an arduous search to determine whether Iraq is really free of deadly weapons, as it insists.
Armed with new high-tech gadgetry and a powerful UN mandate, inspectors have more freedom than ever before to hunt down, and ultimately destroy, any weapons of mass destruction Iraq might possess.
Their gear includes hand-held sensors that can detect the residue of radioactive isotopes and traces of metals and chemicals used to make rockets. Some inspectors will carry portable germ detectors, for ferreting out bioweapons operations. Spy satellites and powerful sensors can detect underground bunkers and efforts to move equipment.
Equally important, the UN inspectors are backed by a new UN resolution that calls on Iraq to disarm or face serious consequences, universally understood to mean a US-led war. The resolution was approved by the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote this month, providing a powerful multilateral mandate for the inspections.
It grants UN weapons inspectors unfettered access to any site or person to determine whether Iraq still has nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as the United States and its ally Great Britain maintain. Iraq must declare all of its weapons of mass destruction, and any related civilian industries, by Dec. 8.
Any omission in that report, or any defiance of inspections, could result in UN diplomats declaring that Iraq is in "material breach" of its obligation to disarm.
The new mandate followed 10 years of repeated defiance by Iraq in the face of UN arms inspections required by the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. Iraqi leaders repeatedly blocked inspectors and hid documents.
Nevertheless, the previous UN weapons team did successfully track down and destroy much of Iraq's deadly arsenal. They discovered Iraq had imported 110 pounds of enriched uranium, enough to make three to 10 nuclear bombs comparable to the one the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. They also found 3.6 tons of VX nerve gas, 550 shells of mustard gas, 2,245 gallons of anthrax, and 5,125 gallons of botullinum toxins.
Yet their work was far from completed when they were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 in advance of allied airstrikes to punish President Saddam Hussein for his lack of compliance. Until this month, UN weapons inspectors had been banned from returning.
As a result, questions linger about Iraq's known stocks of deadly weapons. Doubts remain, for example, about the fate of 200 missing tons of VX and stores of the deadly germ anthrax.
UN specialists hope that Iraq, threatened by war, will submit more gracefully to inspections this time. Yesterday, at least, the omens were good.
"As far as we are concerned, we were able to carry out the activities that we had planned to carry out," inspection team leader Dimitri Perricos said in Baghdad.
Yesterday's inspections were part of what UN weapons specialists call "re-baselining," or checking out sites and equipment visited by the last UN weapons inspection teams. Both areas had been visited before by UN inspectors more than four years ago. But the UN inspectors who arrived yesterday found the monitoring equipment formerly installed at the sites had either been destroyed or moved to Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate.
UN nuclear specialists focused on the Al-Tahadi science research center, where factories produce motors for cement factories, refineries, and water pumping stations. UN chemical, biological, and weapons specialists visited the Al-Rafah military complex, inspecting a graphite factory and missile engine-testing facilities.
Iraq is forbidden from developing missiles that exceed 90 miles in range, but some intelligence experts have suggested a new, square steel-girder stand for holding and testing missiles spotted on satellite photos might be used for larger missiles.
While yesterday's inspections unfolded with relative ease, former UN weapons inspectors and disarmament specialists say the test of Iraqi compliance - and the UN inspectors - is yet to come.
"As far as I am concerned, they could do these inspections now back in New York, " said Richard Spertzel, a former UN weapons inspector. "Dec. 8 is the significant date - once they make the declaration, and don't include something in it."
Only then, analysts say, will UN weapons inspectors visit highly suspect facilities.
While weapons inspectors have a list of some 700 sites, topping them are: Muthanna State Enterprises, northwest of Baghdad, where bombs were made and tested as well as biological weapons; three sites at Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where facilities made dual-use chemicals and some biological weapons; Al Hakam, southwest of Baghdad; Al-Daura, a suspected biological weapons facility near the capital; and Al Tuwaitha and Tarmiya, both areas said to be associated with Iraq's nuclear program.
But some analysts predict the showdown with Iraq may occur at new sites, found through intelligence or defectors' accounts. Another challenge would be locating suspected mobile chemical and biological labs.
"I think the US is looking for the 'signature' of chemical or biological facilities," using satellite imagery, said John Pike, head of globalsecurity.org, a nonprofit defense think tank.
"There won't be any discrepancy between the declaration and what is present at any of the known locations," said Pike. "It will be at the places no one has heard of."
Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
