The Manila Times January 18, 2003
UN inspectors find warheads, but won't call them 'smoking gun'
United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq said they found empty warheads capable of carrying chemical agents, in what may be the first evidence of a violation of UN resolutions by Saddam Hussein's regime.
UN inspectors said that during a visit to the Ukhaider ammunition storage area about 70 miles southwest of Baghdad they found 11 empty chemical warheads and another that requires further evaluation. They selected samples from one of the warheads for chemical testing and took x-rays of the others.
The warheads were in "excellent condition" and were similar to ones Iraq imported during the late 1980s, said a statement by the weapons inspection team, known as the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
The discovery may boost the US contention that Iraq has biological and chemical weapons in defiance of UN resolutions.
US President George W. Bush has vowed to lead a coalition of nations to topple Hussein if Iraq doesn't comply with a Nov. 8 resolution that threatens "serious consequences" for failure to disarm.
"If it turns out that the last warhead does have trace elements of chemical weapons, we've got our smoking gun," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research group in Alexandria, Virginia.
While UN officials said it was too soon to reach any conclusion about the significance of the find, Cable News Network reported that an unidentified UN person in Baghdad said the warheads didn't constitute solid enough evidence that Iraq has illegal weapons.
And a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest discovery did not amount to that: "A smoking gun would be if you found a big stockpile with chemicals."
"Time is running out," Bush said yesterday in a speech at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. "At some point the US' patience will run out" and "I will lead a coalition" of allies to disarm Hussein.
Amir al-Saadi, a senior adviser to Hussein, said in Baghdad that the warheads were included in a 1996 declaration of Iraq's weapons programs and again in the 12,000-page declaration given to the Security Council on Dec. 7.
He said the US wants to make this "a huge finding related to mass destruction weapons. It is neither chemical nor biological. It is empty warheads that were forgotten because they were expired since 10 years ago."
Chief UN inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council on Jan. 9 that some chemical munitions were not accounted for in the Dec. 7 declaration. Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for UN inspectors in Baghdad, said he believed that the warheads at Ukhaider weren't in that account, mandated by the Security Council resolution that set terms for inspections.
The US State Department said in its analysis of the Dec. 7 declaration that Iraq didn't account for almost 30,000 empty munitions that could be filled with chemical weapons.
The discovery touched off immediate discussions at the UN of whether the finding may be the pretext needed to declare Iraq in violation of its UN commitments and subject it to a US-led war to overthrow Hussein's government.
"It signifies there is a certain tension in the air, and I'm not surprised," said Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the UN.
Amir challenged UN inspectors to disprove his claim and described the issue as a "storm in a teacup."
The US is expanding its military forces in the Persian Gulf and will have about 137,000 troops in the region by mid-February.
In addition to the 11 warheads, UN inspectors found one requiring further evaluation, the UN Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission said in a statement.
The UN team, for the first time, visited the homes of two Iraqi scientists in Baghdad yesterday in search of documents, the UN cited Ueki as saying.
"Some documents related to past proscribed activities, dating from the early 1990s, were taken for further evaluation," Ueki said.
Shaker al-Jibouri, a nuclear scientist, told AP the inspectors spent two hours in his home.
"This is a provocative operation," he said. "They did not take away any documents but they looked at personal research papers."
Yesterday, Time magazine, citing unidentified Western and Arab diplomats, said Saudi Arabia wants to depose Hussein's regime to prevent a war.
The Saudi plan involves Iraqi generals overthrowing Hussein and his inner circle, the magazine said, and would include amnesty if a regime change is orchestrated. An amnesty plan would require a UN Security Council resolution, the magazine said. Hussein may accept exile under the proposal, Time said.
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