WASHINGTON, 15 February 2003 — Hans Blix, the UN's chief inspector, presented a crucial report to the UN Security Council yesterday, saying his teams have not found any weapons of mass destruction.
Blix's counterpart, nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, similarly told the Security Council that inspectors had found no evidence Iraq had resumed its nuclear weapons program.
Blix expressed concern that Iraq has still not accounted for many banned arms, but said disarmament can be achieved.
The United States and Britain made clear in their rebuttal speeches that they are still gearing up for war and will almost certainly investigate an Iraqi missile program that exceeds UN limits and questions about nerve agents and anthrax. They argued during the meeting that Iraq has no intention of disarming peacefully.
To a warm applause, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin warned against an early use of military action to force Iraq to disarm.
"The use of force against Iraq is not justified today; there is an alternative to war, and that is to disarm Iraq through inspections," he said.
"Let us give the UN weapons inspectors time," Villepin said, adding that "a premature recourse to the military option would have heavy consequences."
Rebuffing allegations made to the council by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in public on Feb. 5, Villepin said French intelligence had seen nothing to prove the existence of ties between Iraq and the terrorist network Al-Qaeda.
In a rare demonstration of support, most of the diplomats packed into the non-members' gallery burst into applause and clapped for about 30 seconds as Villepin finished speaking.
The French minister called for a new meeting of the UN Security Council at the ministerial level on March 14 to assess the situation in Iraq.
Russia, China and Germany emphasized new signs of Iraqi cooperation, including its decision to allow U-2 reconnaissance flights and private interviews with scientists, and to establish commissions to search for weapons and documents.
Regarding weapons of mass destruction, Blix said the inspection team “has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed,” he said.
He said a finding "of great significance" was that many proscribed weapons '"are not accounted for.” But one must not jump to the conclusion that they exist, he added.
"However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.'"
Blix also questioned evidence that Powell provided to the council in his presentation last week.
Pointing to one example Powell highlighted using satellite photos of a munitions depot, Blix said: "The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity" as one designed to hide banned materials before inspections.
Blix also reported findings by a panel of experts that one of Iraq's new missile systems exceeds the range limit set by Security Council resolutions.
"Both Blix and El-Baradei told Powell and Bush to either show some evidence, or to shut up. That's how I interpret it," Imad Khadduri told Arab News, before rushing off for an interview with "60 Minutes."
Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He left Iraq in1998 with his family, and now lives in Canada.
The report was not what the US Administration wanted to hear.
As expected, Secretary Powell pressed reluctant allies to threaten Iraq with force to disarm and not be taken in by "tricks that are being played on us."
"The threat of force must remain," Powell said. "We cannot wait for one of these terrible weapons to turn up in our cities," he said.
"More inspections — I am sorry — are not the answer," Powell said.
But the secretary ran into stiff resistance.
France called for extended inspections and another report on March 14, and several other nations on the council supported that proposal.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the UN should continue to back arms inspections in Iraq and give inspectors "all necessary assistance."
China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said weapons inspections in Iraq should continue, but called on President Saddam Hussein's government to provide more cooperation.
Meanwhile, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein complied with a key arms inspectors' demand yesterday by decreeing a ban on importing or making weapons of mass destruction.
Hours before the top UN arms inspectors reported to the UN Security Council, Saddam also reiterated that Iraq was free of any such weapons.
The decree is an at least symbolic gesture by the Iraqi president to meet one of the demands that chief weapons inspectors Blix and El-Baradei made when they visited Baghdad in mid-January.
Saddam ordered his ministers to take all necessary measures to implement the decree.
But the White House said it did not see "any credibility" in Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's decree banning weapons of mass destruction.
"It is impossible to place any credibility in the laws, the so-called laws" of Saddam's "totalitarian regime," spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
In the Vatican City, Pope John Paul bluntly told Baghdad to respect UN resolutions in talks with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz yesterday, during which the diplomat pledged his country would cooperate with UN weapons inspectors.
In Washington, despite UN rebuttals, Pentagon officials and defense analysts said that under new US war plans, thousands of helicopter-borne troops and paratroopers would be flown deep into Iraq to seize oil fields, dams and banned weapons, and advance as far as Baghdad on the first day of the fighting. President George Bush met his top field commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, yesterday to review plans quite unlike those used in the last Gulf war.
In Vienna, deflecting criticism from the Pentagon, Austria defended its decision to block US troops from crossing the alpine nation, saying they won't be free to transit the neutral country without a new UN resolution authorizing war.
