Saturday, February 02, 2002

Bush's words of mass deception

by pv vivekanand

AFTER failing to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden -- and by extension proving an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks in the US -- President George W. Bush is citing charges that Baghdad is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction as his reason to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein.
But how authentic is the charge?
On the face of it, the international community is being told to accept that Iraq has eluded the most advanced satellite surveillance -- with equipment that could arguably trace the contours of a grain of wheat on the ground -- and the strictest-ever air-sea-land-blockade backed by intense interceptions and inspection of anything and everything crossing its border -- and managed to resume its clandestine weapons programme.
The assertion is based on an argument that the departure of UN inspectors -- often wrongly described as their expulsion by Iraq -- in late 1998 allowed Baghdad to pick where it had left off following the destruction of most of its weapons of mass destruction under the UN verification and destruction programme.
A review of the UN programme would raise serious questions about the US charge against Baghdad.
It was known that Baghdad and the UN mission never got on well and there were always skirmishes, both diplomatic and otherwise.
Iraq and the UN inspection teams have had many standoffs, some of them resulting from the personal postures adopted by inspectors and others because the Iraqis tried to prevent vital papers on their country's weapons programme as well as intelligence documents unrelated to arms inspections being removed by the UN officials.
"We hated each other's guts," as a former member of the UN team put it.
It had become clear that Iraq had a much larger weapon programme than was known to the international community when the UN inspectors launched their mission in 1991 as the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM).
It took several years before UNSCOM managed to unravel the programme, with the Iraqis revealing information in bits and pieces and only when they were cornered with solid evidence, and it became a cat-and-mouse game.
It was not until late 1995 that the UN managed to get a clear picture of Iraq's military programmes and that came from Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who "defected" to Jordan in August of that year.
Kamel, who served as Iraq's defence minister and head of the country's military industry commission, was believed to have been debriefed not only by the then UNSCOM chairman, Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, but also by American and European intelligence agencies.
At that time Kamel's "defection" and revelations about his country's weapons programmes were seen as Baghdad's opportunity to come clean with its secrets to UNSCOM. In fact, Baghdad blamed Kamel for having kept the secrets for himself and handed over several cupboards full of files that it said were stashed away by the defector at his farmhouse outside Baghdad.
The information gained from those files represented a key pillar of UNSCOM strategy, and it was believed that the UN mission had managed to unearth more than 90 per cent of Iraq's weapon programmes.
Shortly before the inspections came to a premature end prompted by Iraq's insistence that a clear blueprint be given for what was expected of it before the sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it in 1990 are lifted and Washington's refusal to meet the demand, UNSCOM officials had asserted that the bulk of their work was over although they were seeking answers to some vital questions, and those questions are now being dusted off and presented as the reasons for the charges against Iraq.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which followed an independent verification programme, said that it had located Iraq's nuclear programme and had eliminated the country's nuclear material and equipment as well as the ability to renew them. But when the IAEA tried to close the "nuclear file," the US intervened it and aborted the move.
On the "missiles" file, Richard Butler, who succeeded Ekeus as UNSCOM chairman, said in July/August 1997 that the UN team had accounted for all but less than 12 long-range Scud missiles that Iraq was known to have bought from the then Soviet Union and modified.
He also said that the bulk of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed but that the UN team had not received all answers.
"UNSCOM did a fantastic job," he said. "You have to understand that when the Gulf war was ended there was revealed an awesome array of weapons of mass destruction: almost a nuclear bomb, long-range missiles, chemical, biological, all of the weapons of mass destruction. And we, with Iraq, got hold of most of it, got an account of it or got rid of it."
Such comments had also come from several other key members of the UN mission as well as American and international military experts who had access to classified information collected by UNSCOM.
Seen against the backdrop of such assertions, a look at the claims and assertions that Iraq continues to build weapons of mass destruction -- the reason that Bush cites for his plans to launch military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein -- unveils a contradiction.
The key question is: With all entry points into Iraq under close surveillance and a ban on all commercial and military planes in and out of the country, how is it possible that Baghdad continued to develop weapons of mass destruction in the absence of the UN inspectors since late 1998?
In an appearance before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Butler asserted that Iraq had extensive chemical and biological weapons programmes and that there is evidence it has stepped up it alleged nuclear programmes in recent years.
Is the world then to believe that Iraq managed to get equipment and material past the American armada patrolling the seas and checking anything and everything heading for Iraq, and indeed "suspect" material headed for Iraq's neighbours that could be sent to Iraq, and renewed its weapons programme?
It has been 12 years since the sweeping trade embargo was imposed on Iraq.
Isn't it not fair to anyone to expect that the enforcers of the sanctions would have perfected their art?
Almost every vessel, small or big, is inspected before it docks in Iraq or anywhere with access to Iraq. American intelligence agents are present in all neighbours of Iraq -- although to a lesser extent in Iran -- to ensure that no "contraband" material enters the country; nothing beyond food and medicine and related items approved under the UN's oil-for-food programme is allowed into the country. Any item which could have slightest "military use" is blocked from entering Iraq.
An example is caustic soda, a key element in cleaning and washing of dairy equipment. It could also be used in production of chemical weapons, according to experts.
Since the day the sanction and verification regime was put into place, no consignment of caustic soda has been allowed into Iraq, and efforts by Jordan-based exporters to send the material to Iraq across the border -- presumably for legitimate purposes -- have been repeatedly thwarted.
That is only an indication of the effectiveness of the blockade, and it is difficult to see how the Iraqis managed to lay their hands of components of chemical weapons.
However, that is not to say that Iraq could not have done it. Then again, reports from Washington and London indicate that military generals on both sides of the Atlantic are not really convinced that Iraq had developed weapons as alleged or that poses a real threat to the region. Such scepticism has been voiced by officers who should be in a position to have access to classified and top secret information on Iraq's military capabilities as a key pillar of any strategy to launch a war on that country.
Some of the allegations are also based on accounts by Iraqi defectors, both identified and unidentified. However, the credibility and authenticity of such accounts are brought under question when considering that almost all the "defectors" are produced and paraded by Iraqi dissident groups which have a vested interest in convincing the world that Baghdad is evil.
In some cases, it has also been found that the defectors had left Iraq around the same time the UN inspections were halted and they were making claims linked to the period after their departure from the country.
However, regardless of all reasonings and logic based on available facts that expose the hollowness of the American argument for striking at Iraq, the Bush administration is dead bent upon carrying out their designs in the region and Saddam Hussein has no room in their strategy.

'Spying' charges

AS was expected sooner or later, the Swedish diplomat who headed the UN arms inspection programme in Iraq until 1997 has turned around and extended implicit endorsement of Baghdad's assertion that the inspections were mostly a smokescreen for American intelligence activities in the country.
Sweden's Rolf Ekeus, who chaired UNSCOM since its creation in 1991 until he quit in 1997, affirmed in public comments this week that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
In comments carried by Swedish radio, Ekeus said the US and other powers had exploited UN teams in Iraq for their own political ends, including monitoring President Saddam Hussein's movements and that, at times, crises were created that could possibly form the basis for military action.
"There is no doubt that the Americans wanted to influence the inspections to further certain fundamental US interests," Ekeus said in his first affirmation that he was aware of what was going on.
That partly vindicates Baghdad's accusations, particularly that Ekeus was one of the harshest critics of Iraq while he headed UNSCOM and thereafter until this week's comments.
Indeed, one of the key arguments Iraq is putting up against the US demand for renewed inspections of Baghdad's alleged programmes of producing weapons of mass destruction is the record that previous inspectors had spied on the country.
It is not a new position and some of those who served in the UN mission for verification of arms in Iraq until it was stopped in late 1998 had admitted in public that some of their colleagues were intelligence agents rather than arms experts.
In a statement that went largely unnoticed or played down deliberately or otherwise, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said in mid-1998 -that many of the UN inspectors appeared unaware of what they were supposed do in the realm of arms inspections and Iraqi officers assigned to working with them found a marked ignorance among them of technical issues related to weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, it had also been reported that some of the inspectors were reporting directly to Israel with or without US knowledge.
In fact, it was Aziz's statement that enraged Australian diplomat Butler, who assumed charge of the UN inspections as successor to Ekeus in mid-1997, and led to a course of events that culminated in the UN decision to withdraw the inspectors ahead of US-British military strikes against Iraq in December 1998.
Obviously Butler was counting on American military strikes against Iraq everytime he reported to the UN Security Council that Baghdad was not extending the level of co-operation he demanded. He was frustrated that his mission was not making any real headway and knew within a few months' time and several visits to Iraq that he would not get anywhere in his mission. The real reason for the failure was his high-handed approach and effort to dictate terms from his self-assumed position of strength stemming from American military powers to "punish" Iraq if it did not fall in line with his commands.
It was clear that Aziz's pointed comments angered Butler if only because he had hand-picked some of members of the inspection team and the Iraqi minister's accusation was seen as questioning his abilities.
He was visibly upset when he appeared before the press in Bahrain after his last visit to Baghdad during which Aziz had made the statement to the press.
When asked about a report that a British minister had said that Iraq was loading missiles with chemical warheads at the rate of one a day Butler said he was not aware of the report. In a report he presented to the UN Security Council two days after the Bahrain appearance he made no reference to any such Iraqi activity.
However, a few hours after he presented the report, he appeared before a pro-Israeli gathering in New York and accused Iraq of arming missiles with chemical weapons aimed at "destroying" Israel. He repeated that allegation in a New York Times interview shortly thereafter, leaving one wondering why he failed to include it in his official report to the Security Council, the very body which had assigned him the mission and to which he was supposed to report.
The impression one got was that Butler took his failure in Iraq too personal and waged a pointed campaign during which he spared no effort to build the case against Baghdad. And that culminated in the December 1998 military "punishment" for Iraq.
Scott Ritter, an American who served under Ekeus as well as Butler, has affirmed in public comments that some of his team members were obviously engaged in work unrelated to weapon inspections.
Against such a backdrop, it is only natural that Baghdad continues to see any renewed inspection as aimed at gathering more intelligence on the country in preparation for eventual action to eliminate the Saddam regime.
The Iraqi reaction to Ekeus's comments was also predictable.
An official spokesman called the Swedish diplomat's comments as "another important confirmation of many statements by Iraq, international parties and foreign personalities on the exploitation by the United States of UN arms inspectors to perform tasks that contradict their mandate as defined by Security Council resolutions on Iraq."
"The remarks come at a time when extremists in the US administration are trying to distract attention from Iraq's legitimate rights according to Security Council resolutions, in the forefront of them lifting of the unjust sanctions and respecting Iraq's sovereignty," he said.
"The new comments by Ekeus confirm Iraq's legitimate concerns expressed in the questions submitted to the UN secretary-general in talks on May 7," the spokesman added. Those questions sought answers whether US threats against Saddam were a breach of international law to whether US "spies" would serve on inspection teams.
Iraq is now demanding that the Security Council answer Iraq's queries as "a first move to stop the United States' exploitation of the apparatus of the United Nations for ends contradicting those stipulated in the council's resolutions and the UN Charter," said the spokesman.