The US and Britain were yesterday declaring victory for their hawkish stand on Iraq, after the chief United Nations weapons inspector accused Baghdad of lying about its stockpiles of VX gas, anthrax and plans to develop long-range missiles.
At the end of a crucial day at the UN, the inspectors appeared to have earned themselves more time to search Iraq — but only a limited reprieve of less than three weeks. Washington and London agreed to hear another assessment of Iraqi compliance on February 14.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, a key figure behind the Bush administration’s decision to prosecute its case against Iraq through the UN, was in no doubt about the implications of the report from the chief inspector Hans Blix. If Iraq were serious about avoiding war by revealing the whereabouts of its weapons of mass destruction, he said, it would ”drive them up and park them in front of [the inspectors’ headquarters].”
”Time is running out,” he said. ”We made it very clear that we could not allow the process of inspection to string us on forever.”
Blix, responsible for chemical, biological weapons and missiles, stunned the security council with an outspoken condemnation of Iraqi behaviour, saying Baghdad had yet to accept the need for genuine disarmament.
”Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance — not even today — of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.”
Blix gave a litany of unaccounted-for Iraqi weapons, including 6 500 chemical bombs, material sufficient to create 5 000 litres of anthrax and an unknown quantity in weapon form of the lethal chemical VX. He also pointed to programmes to build possible long-range missiles.
By contrast, Mohamed El Baradei, in charge of nuclear inspections, presented a generally positive picture of Iraqi cooperation and appealed for a ”few more months” to carry on his work ”to avoid a war”.
Washington and London inevitably put more emphasis on the Blix report. Downing Street last night breathed a sigh of relief that it had vindicated Tony Blair’s controversial tough stance and shifted the burden of proof to Saddam Hussein to prove he does not have weapons stockpiles.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was bellicose in his response. In contrast to other European foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels, he said: ”There is clear evidence now that Saddam has made this a charade of an inspection, co-operating on process but not on substance.”
According to diplomats at a closed-door session of the security council yesterday, there was general agreement that Iraq was not living up to its obligation to be entirely forth coming about its weapons programmes. Russia and Syria were the only member states to argue that Baghdad was complying fully.
President Bush’s state of the union address today is expected to press the case against Iraq but fall short of setting a fixed ultimatum.
In his report, Blix, the head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic), accused the Iraqi regime of failing to hand over documents and witnesses, or to explain discrepancies in its account of its weapons programmes.
He accused Iraq of misleading the UN over its production of VX gas, saying that, contrary to Iraq’s claims, there were ”indications that the agent was weaponised”. He also said that 16 chemical rocket warheads which had turned up during two months of inspections ”could be the tip of a submerged iceberg”.
As for biological weapons, Blix said: ”There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist.”
The report given by El Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, could not have been more different in tone. He twice called for a ”few more months” to complete his work, unlike Blix who studiously avoided asking for more time.
El Baradei said his inspectors had made ”good progress” and that ”no prohibited nuclear activities have been identified during these inspections”.
He said his inspectors ”should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons programme. These few months would be a valuable investment in peace because they could help us avoid a war.”
Responding to the two reports, Washington’s envoy to the UN John Negroponte said ”nothing we have heard today gives us hope that Iraq intends to fully comply” with the UN resolution on disarmament.
Mohammed al-Douri, Iraq’s envoy at the UN, repeated Baghdad’s claim that the country was clear of any weapons of mass destruction. ”We open all doors to Mr Blix and his team. If there is something, he will find it. We have no hidden reports.”
The British ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, went much further in committing to a further meeting on February 14, as originally suggested by Germany. He added that the security council meeting scheduled for tomorrow would not necessarily be conclusive. In contrast to Straw’s belligerent tone, Sir Jeremy refrained from portraying Blix’s report as grounds for war and instead described it as ”a catalogue of unresolved questions”.
”Most members of the security council, if not all members of the security council, regard this as a part of an ongoing process,” Sir Jeremy said.
Yesterday’s events followed a familiar pattern in which Britain, Washington’s closest ally, has sought to nudge back President Bush’s decision to go to war. Last week Blair fended off an American plan to lay out its intelligence against Saddam and renounce inspections this week, before Friday’s Camp David summit with the US president.
In a sign of a tenuous convergence with the US and Britain, the French ambassador to the UN, Jean Marc de La Sabliere, said that while inspections were going well, it called on Iraq to be more ”pro-active in its cooperation” and to live up to the commitments to the UN last week to be more forthcoming.
Labour leftwingers like Alice Mahon insisted: ”Millions in this country are still saying ‘where’s the evidence’?” Other critics said the reports made a ”forthright case for further inspection,” what Alan Simpson called ”time rather than troops.”
Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, also called for the Unmovic team to get all the time it needs, while the Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, complained that ministers ”have not argued the case they could do” to persuade voters. – Guardian Unlimited Â