The first major test of the United Nations route to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq could come this week if UN inspectors demand the destruction of the country’s most prized weapon — its arsenal of Al-Samoud 2 missiles.
The US is expected to insist that the Al-Samouds be surrendered and destroyed as a test of Iraqi compliance after UN experts found last week that the missile was capable of flying beyond the 150 kilometre limit imposed on Baghdad’s missile programme after the 1991 Gulf war.
However, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, told journalists that dismantling the missiles would be ”unacceptable”, arguing that the Al-Samoud 2 were ”practically within the range we are allowed to have”.
In his report to the security council on Friday, the chief UN inspector, Hans Blix, declared the Al-Samoud 2 ”proscribed”, as well as 380 engines Iraq had imported for the missile, but he did not say whether the weapons had to be destroyed.
He also banned casting chambers for motors which he said could be used for missiles of a much longer range.
A report in the New York Times said that Washington would demand the destruction of the offending weapons as part of a ”final round of tests” to gauge Iraq’s willingness to disarm voluntarily.
However, US officials said at the weekend that the Bush administration had yet to decide whether to pursue the UN route to disarmament in the face of clear resistance in the security council to a resolution backing military action.
If the US did demand the missiles’ destruction, it is likely to win support from a majority on the security council, which is anxious to show that peaceful disarmament can work.
Declassified CIA intelligence reports have singled out the liquid-fuel Al-Samoud as a possible means of delivering chemical or biological weapons.
It is also thought that four Al-Samoud missiles could be clustered together to produce a single improvised missile which could threaten Iraq’s neighbours. – Guardian Unlimited Â