VIENNA, 14 December 2002 — Saddam Hussein’s 2,400-page nuclear dossier contains scant new information that might help the UN atomic agency in its hunt for hidden weaponry, the agency’s chief disclosed yesterday.
What’s most important, a skeptical United States contends, is what’s missing among all 12,000 pages of the voluminous declaration Baghdad gave the United Nations. US intelligence suggests the document fails to address the whereabouts of chemical and biological agents that went missing in Iraq four years ago. Nor, they say, does it detail purchases some in Washington believe might be linked to a clandestine nuclear program.
Briefing reporters at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Director-General Mohamed El-Baradei said only 300 pages — in Arabic and still being translated — are of any real interest, and even “a good part” of those contain information familiar to the agency. The other 2,100 pages amount to a rehash and cover “material we already had before,” he said.
“Iraq has said they have not taken part in any nuclear weapons activities. We are far from reaching a conclusion on that matter,” El-Baradei said. “Of course we must verify that statement. The process will take time, but you need to bear with us because if successful, this is the best way of ensuring that Iraq disarms — and could spare innocent lives.”
US officials believe Iraq’s arms declaration has “omissions big enough to drive a tank through” and fails to account for missing chemical and biological weapons, the New York Times reported. One US official was quoted as saying that the omissions included what had happened to 550 shells filled with mustard gas and another 150 bombs filled with biological agents unaccounted for in the late 1990s. In Iraq, a UN weapons inspection team requested help during its visit to the Health Ministry’s Communicable Diseases Control Center. “This is a newly declared site and we want to clarify the tagging procedure, that is all,” inspector Miroslav Gregoric said.
In an ominous development for Iraq, a Russian government source was quoted yesterday as saying that Baghdad’s cancellation of a contract with oil company LUKOIL deprived Moscow of a major reason for its opposition to a US-led war against Iraq. “If Iraq takes such a decision, then one of the major reasons for Russia to support Iraq in the current international situation disappears,” Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed government source as saying. On Thursday, Iraq scrapped a $3.7-billion deal for LUKOIL to develop the West Qurna field. (Agencies)
