Saddam Hussein risked a devastating US-led war yesterday when he delivered a 12 000-page declaration on Iraq’s arms capability, which he insists proves his regime ”retains no weapons of mass destruction”.
As Iraq handed over its declaration, President Saddam Hussein apologised to the Kuwaiti people for invading their country in 1990, while accusing the country’s leadership of conspiring with plans for an American-led invasion.
In a day of dramatic events the declaration was finally handed over at eight o’clock last night when Iraqi government vehicles drove to the UN compound to give the document to Miroslav Gregorich, head of the UN monitoring operation in Iraq.
Iraqi officials handed over three copies of the document, which Iraq claims is a complete account of its nuclear, chemical, biological and missile projects. The copies were then flown to Larnaca in Cyprus, then on to New York and Vienna. One set goes to the UN nuclear agency in Vienna, one to the UN inspection agency in New York, and one to the Security Council.
General Hassam Mohamed Amin, head of Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, displayed the documents and accompanying CDs to journalists in Baghdad and insisted that his country was clean of weapons of mass destruction.
”I reiterate here Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction,” he said. ”I think if the United States has the minimum level of fairness and braveness, it should accept the report and say this is the truth.”
In an extraordinary twist last night, Saddam ordered a lengthy and rambling television address to be broadcast to the people of Kuwait. He expressed qualified regret for his invasion of their country 12 years ago and appealed to them to resist foreign intervention both in Kuwait and Iraq. The speech appeared designed to turn Kuwaitis against both US troops stationed there and their own government.
In a statement read out on Iraqi television Saddam wrote: ”We apologise to God about any act that has angered him in the past and that was held against us, and we apologise to you (the Kuwaitis) on the same basis.”
Despite the apology Saddam appealed to ordinary Kuwaitis to join his fight against the armies of occupation.
The Iraqi weapons declaration comes amid widespread scepticism in Washington and London that Saddam has finally come clean about Iraq’s banned weapons programmes. Reacting to the Iraqi document, President George Bush said in his weekly radio address that the US would ”judge the declaration’s honesty and completeness” only after it had been thoroughly examined, adding that ”will take some time”.
Writing in the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, Tony Blair echoed Bush’s comments. ”Let us hope that it’s a true and frank account. You’ll forgive me if, knowing all that I do about Saddam’s past record, I remain sceptical.”
But raising the prospect that there may be more in the document than predicted by sceptics, Amin said the declaration would ”answer all the questions which have been addressed during the last months and years”, adding that it contained details of dual-use technologies that could be used to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and would name companies and countries that helped Iraq to develop weapons of mass destruction in the past.
The insistence that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, however, appears to set the country on a collision course with the US — and its closest ally, Britain – both of which claim they have ”solid evidence” that it retains banned weapons systems.
The documents were last night on their way by secure courier to the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna, and the HQ of the Unmovic in New York –which has been mandated to seek out Iraq’s chemical and biological capability.
The two agencies will comb through the document, cross-checking details with their own massive databases compiled from previous inspections, before handing over copies simultaneously to the 15 Security Council member delegations in New York.
To the private fury of senior US officials, Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, has insisted that report will take UN experts weeks to analyse and inspectors months to verify inside Iraq.
UN officials added that weeding out data which might help others produce chemical, biological or nuc lear weapons will further delay handover of material to the Security Council.
Iraq’s denials will renew calls from Bush administration hawks — including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — to quickly declare Iraq in ”material breach” of resolution 1441, setting the clock running for a war, perhaps as early as next month.
The increasingly bellicose language from Washington has led to a deepening rift between senior Bush officials and Blix, who has warned the US that the intelligence it claims to have proving Iraq retains a weapons capability is ”not evidence”. He has insisted that, if such intelligence does exist, it should be given to the inspectors so that they can test it on the ground.
Blix has already indicated that he will not allow the inspections regime to be used as a pretext for war, leading to suspicions among some hawks that he is determined to spin out the inspections for as long as possible.
Iraqi officials showed off the declaration to journalists yesterday at the drab, concrete headquarters of the National Monitoring Directorate in Baghdad.
The report is written in English and covers 12 159 pages. Piled on to a long table were 43 spiral-bound volumes of documents, six folders and 12 CD-Roms.
The work is divided into three parts. The first, and most important, is titled ”A currently accurate, full and complete declaration plus supporting documents” and covers the period from the end of the Gulf war in 1991 until today.
Most of the detail — 6 287 pages — focuses on Iraq’s ”missile activity”. Under UN resolutions imposed after the 1991 war, Iraq is banned from holding missiles with a range greater than 150km (94 miles).
The section also explains Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological activities. For many years Iraq denied it even had a nuclear programme. On CD-Rom, the second section comprises a series of semi-annual reports since 1991. The last section, 352 pages, covers the continuing monitoring process, including cameras, sensors, and tags placed by UN weapons inspectors on suspect equipment. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001