WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, 30 October 2004 — A US Army unit removed 250 tons of ammunition from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in Iraq in April 2003 and later destroyed it, the company’s former commander said yesterday. A Pentagon spokesman said some was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign.
But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency - as the missing high-grade explosives had been - and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons. Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosphorous rounds on April 13, 2003, - 10 days after US forces first reached the Al-Qaqaa site. “I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that,” Pearson said.
Di Rita sought to point to Pearson’s comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive. But Di Rita acknowledged: “I can’t say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX.” Further study was needed, Di Rita said.
Whether Saddam Hussein’s forces removed the explosives before US forces arrived on April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward - because the site was not guarded by US troops - has become a key issue in the campaign.
Pearson’s comments raise further questions about the chain of events surrounding these explosives, the disappearance of which has been repeatedly cited by Democrat John Kerry as evidence that President George W. Bush’s administration has poorly handled the war in Iraq.
Still, 377 tons of explosives amount to a tiny fraction of the weaponry in Iraq. US forces have already destroyed, or have slated to destroyed, more than 400,000 tons of all manner of Iraqi weapons and ammunition. But at least another 250,000 tons from Saddam’s regime remain unaccounted for, and some has undoubtedly fallen into the hands of insurgents.
Meanwhile, US Marines prepared yesterday for a big assault on Sunni rebels and Arab fighters in the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. “We are gearing up for a major operation,” Brig. Gen. Denis Hajlik told reporters at a base near Fallujah in Iraq. “If we do so, it will be decisive and we will whack them.”
Hajlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the expected assault would involve Iraqi forces. Iraq’s US-backed interim government has vowed to pacify the whole country before nationwide elections due in January. US planes have launched almost daily airstrikes on what the military says are safe houses used by a network of Iraqi and foreign fighters led by Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
But a full-scale US-led assault could be as devastating as a Marine offensive in April that Washington called off after a world outcry over civilian casualties in Fallujah. Local doctors reported more than 600 dead in the fighting.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged the people of Fallujah on Thursday to seize what he said could be the “last chance” for a peaceful solution. He set no deadline for them to meet his demands for Zarqawi’s group to be handed over. Fallujah leaders say they know nothing of Zarqawi’s network. In on-off talks with the government, they have said Iraqi security forces can return to the city, but not US troops.
Marine Col. Michael Schupp dismissed the sputtering dialogue as a sham. “The negotiations are a ruse. They are just stalling for time,” he told reporters near Fallujah. US troops would have to support Iraqi forces inside Fallujah after rebels were dislodged, he said. He ruled out any repeat of the “terrible experience” of the peace deal which ended the April fighting by turning the city over to a “Fallujah Brigade” led by former Baathist army officers.
Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda-allied group threatened on Tuesday to behead a Japanese hostage within 48 hours unless Tokyo withdrew its 550 noncombat troops from Iraq. Japan rejected the demand.
The deadline passed without any firm word on the fate of 24-year-old traveler Shosei Kado, but Japan’s Foreign Ministry said it was checking a report that the body of an Asian had been found in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. Police in Tikrit confirmed yesterday they had found an unidentified body, but its description did not fit Koda.
But the Japanese government was told early today that the Japanese hostage has been killed, the Kyodo news agency reported in Tokyo. A body found near the Iraqi town of Tikrit was identified as that of Shosei Koda, a 24-year-old backpacker captured by militants, the news agency said, quoting a Japanese ruling party official whose name was not given.
“We are not in the stage of saying anything at the moment,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said as the report came out overnight in Tokyo. But Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, quoting a US official out of Baghdad, said Japan had been notified that the body had been identified as that of Koda.
A deputy governor of Diyalah province in eastern Iraq, was shot dead by unknown attackers yesterday, police said. “One of the deputy governors, Akil Al-Adili, was gunned down in the northeast of Baquba,” said police Lt. Hassan Mahmoud. Three men attacked the official as he went to an estate agency in the city, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad.
