THE ORLANDO SENTINEL December 5, 2002
INSPECTORS UNDER FIRE FROM BOTH IRAQ, U.S.
By E.A. Torriero
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Bush administration Wednesday pressed the United Nations to intensify its weapons inspections in Iraq, but U.N. officials rebuffed the pressure, and arms monitors in Baghdad said they were making progress.
Iraq voiced its first strong criticism of the inspections. In language that called to mind the rancor of the 1990s inspection process, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan accused the U.N. monitors of spying for the United States and Israel and trying to provoke Iraq as a prelude to war. Still, Iraqi officials vowed to comply with U.N. demands. While asserting again that it has no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq said it would declare to the United Nations on Saturday its potential biological, chemical, missile and nuclear technologies.
The criticism from both sides in the U.S.-Iraq standoff demonstrated the intense political pressure facing the U.N. monitors. In a departure from protocol, the U.N. team leader in Baghdad defended the inspectors' tactics.
"I think what we are doing is the proper job," Demetrius Perricos said at a news conference. "The Iraqi side would like us to be light. The U.S. side would like us to be extremely severe. We are not serving individual nations."
BUSH EXPRESSES PESSIMISM
A day after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and even U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the inspection process had begun well, President Bush on Wednesday reiterated his profound distrust of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Bush said it was too early to tell whether Saddam was complying with the inspections, but he said the record indicated Saddam was "not somebody who looks like he's interested in complying with disarmament."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pushed U.N. inspectors to accelerate and intensify their search efforts.
To the Iraqis, the inspections already are insulting and harsh.
Ramadan, the Iraqi vice president who is known for his sharp rhetoric, accused the inspectors of looking for any pretext for war and said a search Tuesday of one of Saddam's lavish palaces amounted to provocation.
"The inspectors have come to provide better circumstances and more precise information for a coming aggression," Ramadan told an Egyptian delegation in a Baghdad hotel.
Hussam Mohammed Amin, the Iraqi liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors, said monitors knew the palace was mostly a guesthouse that just last week was used to entertain visitors for a feast. He wondered aloud why inspectors declined to wear chemical-protection gear if the site was under suspicion of housing hazardous materials.
Iraqi officials tagging along inside the palace recorded inspectors rifling through a giant refrigerator Tuesday. Monitors were seen examining jars of marmalade and a tray of the dessert baklava.
The U.N.'s Perricos said refrigerators could be storage areas for chemical- and biological-arms ingredients. He admitted to checking the sweets to be certain of the contents.
"It is not true I sniffed the marmalade," he said. "I looked through every marmalade box. They had a very, very nice selection."
INSPECTION TEAM WILL GROW
The United Nations is proceeding on a timetable designed to increase pressure on the Iraqis and catch them increasingly off guard. The first of several helicopters is expected here late this week. U.N. logistical teams are setting up satellite posts in northern and southern Iraq.
By next week, the U.N. team will increase by a few dozen inspectors every two days. Nearly 100 monitors will be in place by Christmas to fan out in various directions. The inspectors hope to visit new locations not seen by multinational teams in 1998.
Already, 20 sites visited last in the 1990s have been reinspected in the past week.
Inspectors Wednesday took a wild, meandering drive, sometimes at speeds exceeding 100 mph, to a stark desert outpost about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
The site was one of the world's most notorious chemical-weapons plants, which operated under the benign name of the Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production.
Known as al-Muthanna, much of the facility was destroyed by U.N. teams after the Persian Gulf War when they uncovered evidence of the production of such deadly agents as mustard gas. The plant also was a breeding ground for the development of anthrax.
Today, the site is virtually empty and sealed. "They were looking for any change, and they found no change," Raad Manhal, an Iraqi military official, said after the inspectors left. "Everything is just like 1998."
NUCLEAR SITE VISITED
Miles to the south, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency spent nearly five hours combing the grounds of the Tuweitha Nuclear Research Center that once housed Iraq's major nuclear reactor. It, too, was a key research center for the enrichment of uranium.
Bombed by Israel in 1981 and also by U.S. planes during the Gulf War, the center is headquarters for a nuclear cancer research and treatment center, Iraqi authorities claim.
On Wednesday, U.N. inspectors found new construction at the site, equipment that had been relocated since 1998 and changes in workforce numbers. Those are precisely the kinds of details that monitors hope to gather at hundreds of other sites across Iraq in the coming weeks, U.N. officials said.
In other U.N. action Wednesday, the Security Council voted to extend the Iraq oil-for-food program for six months. The program, financed by Iraqi oil sales, allows Baghdad to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods while sanctions remain in effect.
GRAPHIC: MAP: FORMER CHEMICAL-ARMS FACTORY INSPECTED U.N. inspectors visited 2 sites on Wednesday -- the al-Muthanna factory, once the heart of Iraq's chemical-and biological-weapons production, and the al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, which recent satellite photos show has undergone new construction. SOURCES: The Associated Press, GlobalSecurity.org, CIA
© Copyright 2002 Sentinel Communications Co.
