BAGHDAD/LONDON, 29 August — Iraq opened up another site suspected of producing chemical weapons for public scrutiny yesterday, as Washington expressed confidence it would get global support for a military strike to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the third such public relations exercise in a month, Iraqi officials gave journalists a tour of a factory at Al-Faluja, 80 kilometers west of Baghdad, suspected of producing chemical and biological agents.
Twice destroyed by US bombing raids in the 1990s, the factory was regularly scoured by UN weapons inspectors between 1994 and 1998, according to Baghdad. “This factory was built in 1987 to produce, at the Agriculture Ministry’s expense, pesticides to protect crops and insecticides for domestic use,” Gen. Muhammad Amin, head of the Iraqi body that deals with UN arms inspectors, said.
According to Amin, the factory was first destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War and then in 1998, but was rebuilt after both strikes. “The UN special commission for disarming Iraq (UNSCOM) inspected this site 250 times, at a rate of once a week. The site was also under a permanent surveillance system from 1994, with five cameras and four sensors linked to UNSCOM headquarters in Baghdad. “US and British media and CIA-backed agents claim from time to time that this factory is used to produce chemical agents,” Amin said.
The West could set Saddam a final deadline to admit United Nations weapons inspectors under a plan being considered by the British Government to avert US-led attacks on Iraq. The plan was revealed by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last night as the diplomatic rift between London and Washington over the prospect of military action deepened.
With Tony Blair back at his desk yesterday after his summer holiday, Downing Street reiterated that Britain’s priority was for the Iraqi leader to comply with a UN Security Council demand to allow inspection of his weapons facilities.
Its comments reflected British worries over the Bush administration’s increasingly hawkish anti-Saddam language. And amid signs of growing international worries about unilateral US action in Iraq, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has compared the American policy of seeking to remove Saddam to Winston Churchill standing alone against Hitler.
Straw, who discussed the Iraq crisis with the prime minister in talks yesterday, said the government was prepared to consider a call by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee to propose a deadline for the Iraqi leader to readmit the inspectors, who have not been inside Iraq since 1998. (The Independent)
