Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=11/13/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=KENNETH ALLARD, MIL. ANALYST

NUMBER=3-421

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

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INTRO: Iraq, faced with the prospect of war, has given its unconditional acceptance to a United Nations resolution that allows U-N weapons inspectors back into the country to search for weapons of mass destruction. In an interview with VOA's Tom Crosby, Kenneth Allard says Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had few options when confronted by the United Nations resolution. Mister Allard is a former army officer and featured military analyst on MSNBC and NBC News who has written extensively about military affairs.

MR. ALLARD: It was pretty obvious, I think, to anybody that looked at it objectively that in this particular instance Saddam Hussein had very, very few choices except to accede to, again, the unified voice of the United Nations and the world community, not just the threats of the United States. And in so doing, I think what he has intended here is to keep on trying to play out for as long as he can the tactics that have worked for him so successfully in the past. And those have simply been the tactics of, loosely labeled, cheat and retreat.

And I think he really fails to understand just how deadly serious the world community and particularly the United States are about enforcing the demands that he disarm. And that is the qualitative change that has occurred here. But I think that we can expect to see him try and play this thing out for just as long as he can.

MR. CROSBY: As we look at this resolution and as we look at the Iraqi acceptance, though, there is that fear that the Iraqis can move whatever weapons they might have or production facilities they might have at will. Is that possible, from your standpoint?

MR. ALLARD: It certainly is possible. And it is one of the things that the scene now shifts back to the U.N. inspectors. They have a formidable task ahead of them, in coming back to the Security Council in some 60 days with a report that essentially says that either Iraq is or is not complying with the terms of the disarmament resolution.

The thing that makes this extremely difficult is that not only is Iraq a very large country, but they have had a long time to get ready for the resumption of inspections. And as good as our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities are in the United States, what you have to realize is that there is no such technology that gets inside a building or beneath the roof of a building. And so that's one of the reasons why I think the Iraqis have had some degree of confidence that they can hide better than we can seek.

MR. CROSBY: Is there some thought, too, that the inspectors might be a little bit handicapped by virtue of the fact that they will not have the kind of access they would probably like to Iraqi scientists who might talk to them if they were outside the country?

MR. ALLARD: I think that the success of this effort really does depend on the ability of the inspectors and their allies outside Iraq to do any number of things that can encourage if not the actual defections then certainly the defection of the information. Because this is very much an information war, and you have to get sources who can talk to you in confidence and have their lives protected. And I'm not sure that we have done that in this instance. It makes the task enormously more difficult.

MR. CROSBY: One might assume, too, that such sources would probably have, if you will, Iraqi handlers watching them at all times.

MR. ALLARD: Exactly. And most of what we have learned that has been valuable about the Iraqi program has come directly because we've had people who have defected and, once outside of Iraq, have clued us in to some enormously interesting developments that our intelligence community had missed entirely. So, there is something to be said, but I would frankly rather have the inspectors in than the inspectors out. It brings an enormous degree of pressure on that regime and, frankly, the more of it, the better.

Military analyst Kenneth Allard of Georgetown University here in Washington and with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.