The US secretary of state, Colin Powell said yesterday that UN weapons inspections in Iraq ”will not work” and there was little point in prolonging them.
In an outspoken interview with five US newspapers, Powell expressed a growing impatience in Washington for the confrontation with Iraq to be brought to a head, and his remarks were all the more significant in light of Powell’s role to date as the chief dove in the Bush administration, who helped persuade Bush to take the case against Saddam Hussein to the UN.
”Inspections will not work, Powell said. ”It’s the scepticism that we had all along … How much longer should inspections go on? One month, two months, three months? What will be the difference if they are simply trying to get time in order to frustrate the purpose of the inspections?”
And in a speech yesterday, President Bush referred to Iraq’s formal declaration last month accounting for its banned weapons programmes as ”12 000 pages of deceit and deception”.
He also pointed to the recent discovery of a dozen empty rockets adapted for chemical weapons, which were not included in the Iraqi declaration.
Bush said: ”We’ve just discovered undeclared chemical warfare in Iraq.
”That’s incredibly troubling and disturbing for a man that is evidence of a man not disarming … He wants to play a game. For the sake of peace, we must not let him play a game. So the resolutions of the security council will be enforced.”
Bush’s speech and the secretary of state’s comments came five days before a report by UN weapons inspectors on Iraqi compliance, which the US wants to treat as a ”moment of truth” in the decision whether to go to war.
”What Iraq has to do is come clean, stop it. Stop the nonsense,” Powell said. ”Stop trying to figure out where the inspectors are going tomorrow morning. Stop frustrating the reconnaissance that we are trying to use to help the inspectors, the air reconnaissance.”
The administration has pointed to Iraqi objections to overflights by American U-2 spy planes seconded to the UN inspectors, arguing that it represents non-compliance and a possible breach of UN resolution 1441, requiring Iraq’s cooperation with inspections.
Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector said Iraq had placed unacceptable limits on his commission’s use of an American U-2 spy plane to search for Baghdad’s weapons.
The British government had sought to play down the importance of the January 27 report as a potential trigger for war, but British officials said there was intense pressure from Bush for a rapid conclusion to the inspections on the grounds that the inspectors were being outfoxed by Baghdad.
In a series of public appearances, administration officials, including Powell’s deputy Richard Armitage, have sought to make the argument that the burden of proof under UN resolutions it is not on the inspectors but on the Iraqi regime, which must prove it has destroyed the extensive biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes it was pursuing before the 1991 Gulf war. – Guardian Unlimited Â