UN weapons inspectors checked a pit on Thursday where Iraq says it destroyed biological warheads, after the chief inspector said Iraq has been more cooperative but hasn’t taken ”a fundamental decision” to disarm.
Iraq prepared for war, with heavily armed police taking up positions in the streets of Baghdad and President Saddam Hussein ordering all Iraqis to dig trenches in their yards, ”so that even if a shell falls on their house, God forbid, a deep trench will
protect them.”
The inspectors returned to a pit on Thursday near the town of al-Aziziya, 100 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, that Iraq opened in an effort to prove that it destroyed R-400 bombs containing biological weapons there in 1991, according to Iraq’s Information Ministry.
The inspectors took samples from metal fragments at the site to check whether they did come from destroyed biological weapons. Another team of inspectors helped Iraqi workers drill holes in 155mm artillery shells filled with mustard gas that Iraq reported to the inspectors, Iraq said. They planned to complete the shells’
destruction on Thursday. The inspectors also visited a medicine factory, an electronics plant and made an unexpected stop at computer shop, searching files and computers for 90 minutes. A neighbor asked: ”Why are they doing this? It’s just a computer shop.”
On Wednesday night, Iraq announced that two French Mirage reconnaissance planes flew over the country in support of UN weapons inspections for the first time. Three American U-2 spy planes — which fly at higher altitudes than the Mirage — have already made similar runs.
The United States and Britain accuse Iraq of failing to comply with UN resolutions demanding it give up all weapons of mass destruction. In Washington, US President George Bush said on Wednesday that Saddam must be disarmed by force if he doesn’t disarm himself, though he didn’t say what would convince him that
Iraq is disarming.
”In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilised world, and we will not allow it,” Bush said.
Bush also said deposing Saddam could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace and democracy, including progress toward ”the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, speaking to reporters on Thursday on the sidelines of an Arab League foreign minister’s meeting in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, had a one-line response to Bush’s speech: ”He is a reckless, obsessed person.”
In Baghdad, police deployed around key installations on Wednesday armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, in their first major drill of wartime defence. Trucks carrying police cruised the streets. In a downtown street an anti-aircraft gun was mounted on a Jeep.
Police in green uniforms and black berets patrolled around the Foreign Ministry with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.
Sandbags were erected on one of Baghdad’s main shopping streets. People went about their business normally. Traffic was heavy and stores did bustling business.
Saddam met with the governors of Iraq’s 18 provinces with a message for their citizens: ”They have to dig trenches in their gardens,” the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
The governors said they had completed preparations ”to confront the invaders,” the news agency said, forming ”jihad groups of clerics and tribesmen to fight the invaders, and commando units to hunt helicopters.”
CBS Television released the full transcript of an interview conducted on Monday with Saddam, who said his country didn’t lose the 1991 Gulf War and would vigorously defend itself if attacked.
”It is our duty, it is our responsibility to defend our country, to defend our children, to defend our people, and we are not going to succumb, neither to the United States nor to any other power,” he said.
The Iraqi leader said he still hoped war could be avoided, and asked whether he was afraid of being killed or captured, he responded: ”Whatever Allah decides.”
In New York, chief inspector Hans Blix delivered a 17-page report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will send it to the Security Council. The report will be influential in a council debate over a US-British-Spanish resolution that would authorise war.
”It’s a chronology of what we’ve been up to for the last three months,” said Blix’s reppresentative, Ewen Buchanan.
The contents of the report were not immediately made public, but Blix indicated that while Iraqi cooperation was improving, he wanted to see even more. Blix welcomed recent Iraqi letters that contained new information about its weapons programmes but said they did not represent ”full cooperation or a breakthrough.”
Nonetheless, he noted that inspections resumed only in November after a four-year break and asked: ”Is it the right time to close the door?” – Sapa-AP