WASHINGTON, 21 December 2002 — Arms inspectors yesterday criticized the United States and its ally Britain for not sharing vital information on Iraq as the two nations prepared for a war in the Gulf.
“If the UK and the US are convinced they have evidence, well then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where is this stuff,” said Hans Blix, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons inspection teams in Iraq.
Asked if he was getting all the cooperation he wanted from Western intelligence, he told BBC radio: “Not yet. We get some but we don’t get all we need. The most important thing that governments like the UK or the US could give us would be to tell us of sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction.”
A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mark Gwozdecky, told Reuters the UN nuclear watchdog had also received little help despite being “led to believe that we will be getting some of this information”.
Washington insisted that it will keep sharing intelligence with the weapons inspectors but will not provide secrets that risk “drying up” its sources for future data. “We want to help the inspectors to have all the evidence they need,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, but “we will never do anything that could lead to drying up of sources and methods.”
Washington stood alone on Friday in saying Iraq had committed a “material breach” by lying about its weapons programs. Even its closest ally, Britain, stopped short of using the term that could trigger war. “At the moment we simply don’t know whether Iraq will be found in breach of the United Nations resolution,” Blair said.
“The key thing at the moment is to make all the preparations necessary, and to make sure that we are building up the capacity in the region — both the Americans and ourselves — and that we are able to undertake this mission if it falls on us to do so,” he said on British Forces Broadcasting Service.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Iraq’s declaration contains nothing indicating that it is in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Ivanov’s comment was Russia’s first official reaction to the weapons declaration. Ivanov was in Washington for talks on the Middle East.
The two other permanent members of the Security Council — China and France — have also refrained from saying Iraq was in “material breach” of the UN resolution.
Bush administration officials have indicated the next milestone date would be Jan. 27 when the UN weapons inspectors are scheduled to make their first substantial assessment to the Security Council. They said Bush could make a decision around that time to attack Iraq.
Fueling speculation of a US-led attack early next year, a German government source said Washington had asked Berlin to provide 2,000 troops to guard US bases in the country at the end of January.
A US defense official said Washington will send an extra 50,000 troops and more military hardware to the Gulf by early January. The deployment will include tens of thousands of reservists and give Bush the option to start combat operations against Iraq in late January or early February, the official said.
There are now about 65,000 US forces in the Gulf, including 15,000 in Kuwait on the border with Iraq. The new deployment will take the force above 110,000.
“We want to be ready, but of course, it’s up to the president to decide about a war and he has not made a decision,” the official said on condition of anonymity. American and British warplanes, meanwhile, attacked Iraqi air defenses in a southern “no-fly” zone yesterday in the fifth such raid in a week. (Agencies)
