U.N. Teams Search Saddam's Palace

[Redfield]

U.N. Teams Search Saddam's Palace
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - International weapons hunters went straight to the heart of Saddam Hussein's regime on Tuesday, searching the rooms of an opulent presidential palace in a show of U.N. power, just when Washington was openly questioning their ability to do the job.

A senior Iraqi official, meanwhile, said Baghdad will reaffirm in a crucial upcoming U.N. declaration that it has no weapons of mass destruction despite U.S. and British claims to the contrary.

Melissa Fleming of the U.N. nuclear control agency in Vienna, Austria, said the Iraqis were expected to submit their report to the U.N. office in Baghdad on Saturday — one day before the deadline mandated by the Security Council.

The unannounced visit to the Al-Sajoud palace was the biggest test yet of the arms monitors' authority under a new U.N. resolution, which led to resumption of inspections here last week after a four-year break.

Seven minutes after the inspectors rolled up to the palace entrance, the towering front gates swung open, allowing them access to the palm-lined compound. Inside, they found a sprawl of ostentation and luxury, but there was no word they found anything else.

"Our inspectors were able to inspect every corner of the presidential palace," said their spokesman, Hiro Ueki. The chief Iraqi liaison, Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, said the Iraqis were cooperative and "the inspectors were happy."

Video from inside the palace, obtained by Associated Press Television News, showed inspectors, clipboards in hand, quickly moving through darkened rooms with flashlights, stopping occasionally to peruse, for example, a utility room or a refrigerator. "Marmalade," one announced after looking over a jar.

The visit by 17 U.N. inspectors lasted just 1 1/2 hours, hardly enough for an exhaustive search of scores of rooms and the vast grounds.

But it bore a symbolic message: that this time, unlike in the 1990s, the U.N. teams have a free run of Iraq, under a Security Council mandate requiring Baghdad to shut down any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.

President Bush alleges the Iraqis have retained some chemical and biological weapons — missed during previous inspections — and haven't abandoned their nuclear weapons program. In a speech Monday, Bush contended that so far "the signs are not encouraging" that the Iraqis will "cooperate willingly and comply completely" in the inspection process.

The inspectors, however, report the Iraqis have fully cooperated thus far. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan underlined that point. "There is a good indication that the Iraqis are cooperating, but this is only the beginning," he said Tuesday.

The declaration the Iraqis are required to submit by Sunday — reporting on any weapons of mass destruction, along with chemical, biological and nuclear activities they say are peaceful — will help shape the inspectors' future work in Iraq, as they seek to verify Baghdad's claims.

Gen. Amin indicated the report, which may run to thousands of pages, would include "new elements," but "those new elements don't mean that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction."

The U.S. administration is expected to dispute that. The Iraqi report "must be credible and complete," Bush declared Monday.

The United States has threatened war against Iraq — with or without U.N. approval — if in its view Baghdad is not stripped of weapons of mass destruction.

Other governments say only the U.N. Security Council can authorize such aggression in the absence of a situation of immediate self-defense.

Turkey's foreign minister said Tuesday that his country would allow the United States to use military bases on its soil for an attack against Iraq — if the United Nations approves military action.

Yasar Yakis spoke after meeting with U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was in Turkey to lobby for support of an operation against Iraq.

Hundreds of staff officers of the U.S. Central Command were gathering in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, meanwhile, for a major "war game" beginning next week that could provide models for any eventual conflict with Iraq.

Tensions flared at the head of the Gulf on Tuesday. An Iraqi vessel traded fire with two Kuwaiti coast guard speedboats near the two countries' maritime border. Kuwaiti officials reported no one was wounded.

The U.N. inspectors of the 1990s eliminated tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them, and dismantled Iraq's program to build nuclear bombs. Those inspectors suspect they didn't find all the weapons, however.

That monitoring regime broke down amid disputes over U.S. spies in the U.N. operation, and over access to sites, including presidential palaces, when suggestions arose that the Iraqis might be hiding doomsday weapons in Saddam's grandiose homes.

It took personal negotiations in 1998 between the Iraqi president and Annan to reach an accommodation under which inspectors could visit with diplomatic escort and advance notice. Teams did eventually inspect eight disputed palaces, including Al-Sajoud, and found nothing.

The U.N. resolution adopted last month overrides such previous arrangements and mandates unrestricted access.

The arrival of the inspectors' half-dozen U.N. vehicles at Al-Sajoud on Tuesday sent gate guards scrambling and security men radioing for instructions. But their speed in allowing the inspectors inside indicated they were generally aware they might receive a U.N. visit any day.

At the same time, a second U.N. team entered from a back gate, and inspectors were seen filing into the huge main building, a modernized, Islamic-style palace in tan brick, with a frontage of several hundred yards.

Once the inspectors left, reporters were allowed inside the palace's spectacular entry hall, a three-story-high, eight-sided room of carved white marble, overhung with a giant gold-and-crystal chandelier. The reporters had only a brief look, but it was telling: Each of the eight walls was inscribed in huge gold letters with a poem praising Saddam.

"You are the glory," read one.

In another development Tuesday, at an industrial complex north of Baghdad, Gen. Amin displayed for reporters a supply of aluminum tubes, which he said were of the same type U.S. officials allege was destined for use in building gas centrifuges for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium as bomb material.

Amin noted that these tubes were being used to make small, conventional artillery rockets, and had no nuclear connection.

The U.N. inspectors visited the industrial site last week. Spokesman Ueki said only that the question of the tubes' use was still to be assessed.

Source

[RedLine99]

Ok, Henri, plant one of those little black ones...there. And then plant another..there. Good.

Now we can go.


Houston? Houston? How do you read me?

What? Check the basement?


Dammit, Henri! I knew we forgot something again.

[Manu]

lol.

Well, we found nothing, it was a suprise inspection. I wonder if they just wanted to test the Iraqi cooperation or if they had any intel that there would be stuff there?

[Kyle Gridley]

Originally posted by Manu
lol.

Well, we found nothing, it was a suprise inspection. I wonder if they just wanted to test the Iraqi cooperation or if they had any intel that there would be stuff there?

With the amount of press that the inspections are getting, I bet is was a PR move as much as a real inspection.

But I did learn from this that someone in Saddam's palace likes marmalade. The news is educational after all!

[CYLLON]

"According to recent news, U.N. inspectors conducted an unannounced inspection at one of Saddam Hussein's presidential sites. They departed after something like an hour and a half - presumably satisfied that everything was OK.
I know something about arms-control inspections: I served as an inspector for four years at the European outpost of the U.S. Department of Defense arms-control verification unit, the On-Site Inspection Agency (today they call it Defense Threat Reduction Agency). Our primary mission was verification of compliance by the former Warsaw Pact countries with the arms-control treaties in Europe: the Intermediate Nuclear Forces, the Conventional Forces Europe and the Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBM, also known as the Vienna Document).
I participated in something like 50 inspections, and escorted something like 20 or 30 inspection teams at U.S. facilities in Europe. So I do know something about arms-control inspections.
Based on my experience, any arms-control inspection team that clears a site in an hour and a half either does not know its business, or it is lying, or it does not want to risk finding evidence of non-compliance - or all three.
The inspection protocols we followed in Europe were based on a presumption of voluntary compliance, something seen as in the interest of all parties concerned (as President Reagan put it: "Trust but verify") - and not something forced on the inspected party by the threat of war. Initially, the Russians made a few attempts to circumvent some treaty provisions, but that was mostly just to test the inspectors' resolve and professionalism, rather than an attempt to get away with keeping an extra howitzer or two in the inventory.
Under the most comprehensive and most intrusive of the three treaties - the CFE treaty - the inspectors had something like 36 hours to inspect a single Object of Verification (a regiment-to-brigade-sized combat unit or an airfield with something like a squadron of aircraft).
On arrival, the inspectors already knew just about everything important about the site (quantities of major pieces of equipment, designation and strength of units, etc.) because the information had already been provided in a comprehensive information exchange.
During the inspection, they would be assisted in every way by the host nation: full disclosure of all significant information, instant answers to treaty-related questions, on-call transportation (including a helicopter, if necessary), English-speaking escorts, instant access to any enclosed space with a doorway wider than 2 meters, etc. With all this assistance and a well-established routine, a nine-man inspection team would still spend a full working day at the very least to inspect all buildings, storage areas, training areas and vehicle parks.
The situation in Iraq is different. So far, Iraq provided no verifiable information, so the inspectors can rely only on intelligence reports. Iraq has already established a history of deception, of dragging its feet every step of the way, and of obstructing inspections. Its compliance is only enforced by the threat of a major military attack against the country's vital interests. In these circumstances, a three-bedroom, two-bath family home with a two-car garage requires more than an hour and a half to verify the absence of weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. team was either incompetent (unlikely) or a willing participant in being deceived."

Peter A. Kiss


FROM THE ARTICLE BY Joseph Farah
"Who is running this circus, and what are their objectives? Does someone want the team comprised of people who can be easily manipulated? Does someone at the State Department and/or the U.N. want these inspections to fail?
Former inspectors suggest just that. They say the new inspectors have been chosen in part to avoid offending Iraq. The critics say Blix is bypassing experienced inspectors because they were opposed by Iraq as too aggressive in earlier searches.
So, it appears there is a whitewash under way. How will that serve the security interests of the United States? How will that serve President Bush's objectives in the region? How will that serve the people of Iraq and neighboring countries? "

"http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/UN_Palace021203.html

"The U.N. team left the west Baghdad grounds after 1½ hours and had no comment for reporters, as has been their practice. But the visit itself carried a message: that this time the inspectors have a free run of Iraq, under a Security Council mandate requiring the Baghdad government to give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. "


The longets inspection till then was 4 hours