THE LIMITS ON UNSCOM ACTIVITY
Iraq News, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1998
By Laurie MylroieThe central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .
I. ECEVIT, IRAQ'S WEAPONS "VERY WORRISOME," REUTERS NOV 4
II. THE DANGERS OF IRAQ'S BW PROGRAM, REUTERS, NOV 4
III. THE LIMITS ON UNSCOM ACTIVITY, AP, NOV 4
IV. SAUDI MINISTER, BIN LADIN NOT INVOLVED IN SAUDI BOMBINGS, AP, NOV 4
V. JIM HOAGLAND, OVERTHROW SADDAM, NOV 5
VI. WSJ EDITORS, BOMB IRAQ, NOV 4
This is the 92nd day without weapons inspections in Iraq and the
fifth day without UNSCOM monitoring.
Ken Timmerman, publisher of "Iran Brief," in the WSJ, Nov 3, writing
of the danger posed by Iraq's suspension of UNSCOM monitoring, advised
that the US should mount serious offensive strikes against Iraq and then
"the administration should order the Pentagon to spend $97 million
authorized by Congress to train and equip an Iraqi Liberation Army under
the leadership of the broad-based Iraqi National Congress."
Abbas al-Janabi, Uday's former aide, who gave a lengthy interview to
al Hayat [see "Iraq News," Oct 29], was also interviewed by The
Guardian, Nov 3. The interview can be found at http://www.inc.org.uk
Following Mon's decision to send Sec Def Cohen to Europe and the Gulf,
he left that night, with Under Sec State, Thomas Pickering, and Centcom
Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni, stopping for an hour's meeting with UK
Defense Sec George Robertson during a refueling stop at Heathrow, after
which the Americans continued on to Saudi Arabia. AP reported that the
Saudis were cool, but US authorities maintained they had the necessary
support. Yesterday, they went on to Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.
Tomorrow, they are to go to Egypt and Turkey, according to the Wash
Post, to Oman and the UAE, according to Reuters.
On Tues, Russian Foreign Minister, Igov Ivanov, said "there could be
no military solution to the Iraq crisis and implictly warned the United
States against a 'one-off' strike to force Iraqi compliance with UN
demands," according to Reuters.
Yesterday, Reuters reported that Turkey's Dep Prime Minister, Bulent
Ecevit, long sympathetic to Baghdad, met KDP leader Massoud Barzani, and
said, "We agreed that the Baghdad government's resistance on the matter
of weapons of mass destruction was very worrisome," even as Ecevit also
called for lifting sanctions.
Egypt's Foreign Minister, Amr Mussa, according to today's Wash Post,
said, "The Arab world is not going to repeat 1991 . . . All the people
of the region have sympathy for the people of Iraq . . . Iraq does not
pose any threat the way it did. Iraq is an important part of the Arab
world; it will not be on the sidelines for long."
Yesterday, David Kelly, a senior UK defense ministry expert, addressed
a French defense conference and spoke with Reuters. Kelly explained the
dangers in Iraq's bw program. As Reuters reported, "The worst-case
scenario was that of an Iraqi fighter-bomber spraying the contents of a
2,200-litre drop tank during a high-speed, low-altitude flight over a
city. 'It could spray anthrax, a living bacteria which is inhaled and
blocks body functions. It kills within two or three days. Tel Aviv has
a million inhabitants--most could be killed by a single aircraft flying
over the city in specific weather conditions.' . . Kelly also said he
had found evidence of Iraqi 'dirty tricks' programmes that included
research into 'Camel Pox,' a biological weapon that would incapacitate
or kill North Americans or Europeans but spare Arabs."
Also, yesterday, UNSCOM spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, explained to AP the
degraded state of UNSCOM activity, "'By letting our technicians go out,
they (the Iraqis) give the appearance that some sort of monitoring is
still going on. . . . [But] it's maintenance work,' he added explaining
UNSCOM has just a handful of air-sampling sensors to check for chemicals
and cameras at no more than 20 to 30 sites, a 'small fraction' of
several hundred suspected weapons sites in Iraq." And as Buchanan
explained to "Iraq News," a camera will not tell you whether a fermenter
is making pharmaceutical products or anthrax.
There were several significant developments regarding terrorism
yesterday. The State Dept issued a warning to US citizens traveling
abroad, because of the prospect of a US military strike on Iraq.
The Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Nayif, said that Osama bin Ladin
was not behind the Nov 95 bombing of a US training mission in Riyadh or
the Jun 96 bombing of the base that housed the US pilots who enforced
the no-fly zone in Southern Iraq, as AP reported.
And the Justice Dep't issued a 238-count indictment against Osama Bin
Ladin for the Kenya/Tanzania bombings and other acts of terrorism.
Readers of "Iraq News" will remember finding on their computers, on the
morning of Aug 6, the angry statements issued by Iraq the day before, as
it suspended UNSCOM inspections, and then waking up the day after to
learn that the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been bombed
simultaneously.
"Iraq News," Aug 24, said it would explain how the Clinton
administration separated the question of state sponsorship from the
criminal question of the guilt or innocence of those involved in
terrorist bombings. Yesterday, Michael Kelly linked Clinton's
fundamental dishonesty--it depends on what the meaning of "is" is--to
the present crisis over UNSCOM monitoring. It is also relevant to
terrorism.
The following is a brief summary, with more to come later. Clinton
administration policy on terrorism was set by its response to the NYC
bombing conspiracies that occurred in the first half of 1993--the Feb 26
bombing of the World Trade Center and a plot later that spring to bomb
the UN, NY's Federal Building, and two tunnels. The administration
dealt with the criminal question of the guilt or innocence of the
perpetrators publicly, through trials, while it dealt with the question
of state sponsorship surreptitiously, acting, without explaining itself
clearly.
Following the Trade Center bombing, an attempt to topple NY's tallest
tower on to its twin, NY FBI believed that Iraq had been behind the
bomb, but was unable to prove it. [See L. Mylroie, Who is Ramzi Yousef;
What it Matters, The National Interest, Winter 95/96,
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iraq/956-tni.htm ]
And after the Trade Center bombing, the FBI also launched an
undercover operation aimed at the NYC area fundamentalists. A Sudanese
immigrant, Siddiq Ali, picked up the bait. His original target was a
Manhattan armory. But he had two "friends"--intelligence agents--at
Sudan's UN Mission. They became involved in changing the targets of the
conspiracy. They offered to provide Siddiq Ali diplomatic plates to get
a bomb-laden van into the UN parking garage and also suggested the
bombing of New York's federal building.
On Jun 24, when the FBI had all the evidence it needed in the second
bombing conspiracy, including the conspirators on video mixing what they
thought was explosive material [it was not], it arrested them. Two days
later, Clinton hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters. Clinton said that
the strike was for Saddam's attempt to kill George Bush. But the White
House accepted the suspicions of NY FBI. The strike was also meant for
the Trade Center bombing.
Moreover, the White House knew of Sudan's involvement in the second
bombing conspiracy, as the Gov't was running the plot. But it believed
that Sudan alone didn't make sense, as Sudan wasn't even then on the
State Dept's list of terrorist states. The administration thought in
terms of fundamentalism and thought that Iran was the hidden hand behind
Sudan. Thus, it leaked to Tom Friedman that the strike on Iraqi
intelligence headquarters was also meant as a warning to Iran and Sudan
[NYT Jun 28 93], prompting the NYT Editors, Jun 30, to write, "There's
no practical reason to think a missile attack on Baathist Baghdad will
have much have much deterrent effect on the fundamentalist mullahs of
Tehran, Khartoum, or Jersey City."
But that is Clinton; it depends on what the meaning of is "is." The
administration didn't explain itself, because if it did, the US public
might well have demanded that it do much more in response to foreign
terrorism on US soil. And the administration wanted to concentrate on
domestic affairs. Also, it thought that the strike would be effective.
It thought that it would teach Saddam a lesson and constitute warning to
Sudan, and what it thought was Iran, for their peripheral involvement in
the second plot.
Yet Iran had no reason to want to blow up the UN. For Iran, the most
important thing regarding its relations with the UN was that the UNSC
resolution that ended the Iran-Iraq war declared Iraq the aggressor and
awarded Iran tens of billions of dollars in reparations.
But who hates the UN more than anyone else? Sure. And Iraq has very
close ties with Sudan, revealed most recently in the context of the Aug
20 US strike on a suspected VX facility in Khartoum. Iraq made more
sense than Iran, as the hidden hand behind Sudan.
In Dec 94, Martin Indyk, then NSC adviser on the Middle East, called
me into his office to explain this, as I had written it up in a book
manuscript I was trying to get published. I summarized the general
thesis and concluded the summary with the observation that the US strike
on Iraq had only stopped Saddam temporarily. Indyk's only response was
to ask, "Temporarily?" "Sure, Martin," I replied, "One strike on an
empty building at night is not going to stop Saddam forever."
And that, "Iraq News" believes is the basic problem regarding the
administration's handling of state sponsorship in several of the
terrorist bombings since. Americans have died, because of the sly and
clever way that the administration dealt with the terrorism that
occurred in the first half of 1993.
That, even as the question of terrorism is relevant to an assessment
of the nature of the threat that Saddam poses and how the US should
respond. Jim Hoagland, in today's Wash Post, argued that the US should
overthrow Saddam by supporting an insurgency, because present policy was
not working. "Clinton has permitted the pillars of local opposition to
Saddam to be completely eroded over the past year years. The
administration compounds the problem by surveying the damage its
inaction and inconsistency have wrought in northern Iraq and elsewhere
in the country and blaming the victims. . . . The Iraq Liberation Act,
conceived and steered through Congress by concerned Republican Senate
and House staffers and signed into law by Clinton on Oct 31, can help
repair the damage. . . It would put the United States on the side of
those who would end Saddam's international wars by ending the permanent
war he has declared at home. That has to be the American purpose in
Iraq, not the open-ended maintenance of international sanction and arms
control regimes that Saddam can bend to his unholy purposes."
Finally, the WSJ editors, playing catch-up, yesterday wrote the
editorial that appeared in the Wash Post and NYT the day before and
called for a military strike on Iraq.
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