January 29, 2003

IRAQ: Bush Says Hussein Concealing Weapons, Promises Proof

With the U.N. Security Council slated to meet yet again today to discuss the Iraq crisis, U.S. President George W. Bush said last night in the annual State of the Union address that Iraqi "dictator" Saddam Hussein is "not disarming" but instead "deceiving." The president set no date for a military confrontation with Iraq (Merzer/Enda, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 29). He reiterated, though, that "if Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."

Bush said he plans to ask the Security Council to meet next Wednesday to discuss "Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world," adding that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will present the council with intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, "its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups" (BBC Online, Jan. 29).

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergei Lavrov said this morning that Russia "welcomes the statement [by President Bush] that information will be provided on Wednesday. We have been stressing all along that if countries have persuasive proof that Iraq continues its WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs, then that proof should be presented either to the council or to the inspectors." He added, "We have not seen any reason so far to undercut the inspection process. The inspections are useful, efficient and they should certainly continue."

Going into this morning's closed-door Security Council consultations, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said, "I will continue to plead for more time" for weapons inspections. "I still believe we have not exhausted the possibility of a peaceful resolution," he said.

"We are still in mid-course. We are making steady progress in the nuclear area and I believe we still need a few months before we can come to a conclusion," he added. Referring to the separate areas of nuclear inspections and chemical and biological inspections, ElBaradei said, "Unless we make equal progress, the Iraq issue will not move forward." He added, "We need to make sure so parallel progress on both fronts" (Jim Wurst, UN Wire, Jan. 29).

U.N. Inspections "Thoroughly Compromised," U.S. Official Says

Bush administration officials cited by the Philadelphia Inquirer said they have information indicating Iraqi military officers regularly intercept communications between U.N. inspectors and have advance knowledge of the inspectors' plans. One official said "the inspection regime has been thoroughly compromised." Another said inspectors' rooms and communications have been bugged and that some translators working for the United Nations are Iraqi agents.

Bush said Iraq cannot account for 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and up to 500 tons of chemical agents. To emphasize the danger implied by such numbers, he suggested a potential link between Iraq and terrorist groups.

"Before Sept. 11, 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained," Bush said. "But chemical agents and lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known" (Merzer/Enda, Philadelphia Inquirer).

In the official Democratic response to the Republican president's address, Washington state Governor Gary Locke said Democrats "support the president in working with our allies and the United Nations to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il of North Korea." He added that his party backs Bush "in the course he has followed so far: working with Congress, working with the United Nations, insisting on strong and unfettered inspections" (BBC Online).

Iraq Denies Al-Qaeda Link

Iraqi National Assembly member Hazem Bajilan told Associated Press today that Iraq has no connection with al-Qaeda and no weapons of mass destruction. Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Baghdad will send the United Nations a detailed report by tomorrow to "clarify" Monday's report to the Security Council by Hans Blix, the chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Charles Hanley, AP/Yahoo! News, Jan. 29).

World leaders largely welcomed Bush's pledge to provide more intelligence to the United Nations but expressed continuing reluctance about a war and stressed the primacy of the United Nations.

European Union foreign policy head Javier Solana welcomed the intelligence offer and said "the center of gravity should continue to be the Security Council."

"Saddam Hussein has to cooperate rapidly and cooperate in a very determined manner with the inspectors," he added.

German President Johannes Rau, whose country takes over the Security Council presidency next month, called for multilateralism. "The fight against dictatorship and terror is not a matter for one state but for the world community," he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that countries "have to do everything possible to avoid a war" but that Moscow is "ready to listen and analyze attentively the additional information which the U.S. secretary of state plans to present before the U.N. Security Council" (BBC Online II, Jan. 29). Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Russia does "not see grounds for the use of military force," adding, "The potential for political and diplomatic regulation has not been exhausted, and we think that international inspectors should be given the opportunity to continue their work" (CNN.com, Jan. 29).

Yesterday, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin abandoned his explicit opposition to military action, saying he could consider backing "tougher" U.S.-driven Security Council decisions "if Iraq creates problems for the inspectors' work" (Jack/Warner, Financial Times, Jan. 29).

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin today welcomed the intelligence offer and expressed wariness about a war (CNN.com).

Spanish diplomatic sources cited by Agence France-Presse said Spain, one of the rotating Security Council members, wants the council to pass a new resolution affirming that Iraq has failed to disarm but also wants inspectors to be given more time (AFP/Times of India, Jan. 29).

U.S. Nobel Winners Oppose War

In a letter distributed in Congress before Bush's speech last night, 41 U.S. Nobel laureates -- an all-male group including physicists, chemists, economists and physicians -- expressed opposition to military action.

"Military operations against Iraq may indeed lead to a relatively swift victory in the short term. But war is characterized by surprise, human loss and unintended consequences," they said. "Even with a victory, we believe that the medical, economic, environmental, moral, spiritual, political and legal consequences of an American preventive attack on Iraq would undermine, not protect, U.S. security and standing in the world" (AFP/Dawn, Jan. 29). Another Nobel Prize winner, German writer Guenter Grass, expresses opposition to an Iraq war in a London Guardian commentary today.

"We know how people create enemies where none exists. We know -- and have plenty of pictures to illustrate it -- what happens in war when the target is not quite hit. We are familiar with the words for damage and casualties, which we are told to accept as inevitable. We are used to the relatively small number of its own dead that the world's No. 1 ruling power has to count and mourn while the mass of enemy dead, including women and children, go uncounted and are not worth mourning," Grass writes.

Those in favor of war say Hussein "is in possession of weapons of mass destruction (which has not yet been proved)," Grass continues. "We are also promised that after this dictator is defeated, democracy will be installed in Iraq. But this dictator's neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which are Western allies and serve as launch pads for invading Iraq, are also dictatorships. Are they the next targets for wars to bring democracy?"

Grass accuses the United States and its allies of "hypocrisy" in dissimulating their "true interests" -- the need for Iraq's oil. "The current U.S. president," he writes, "is the perfect expression of this common danger we face" (Guenter Grass, London Guardian, Jan. 29).