Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 27, 1998
Report: Iraq not complying on weapons
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said yesterday that weapons inspectors have found Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions to destroy biochemical arms, including the highly touted agreement reached with Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The U.N. inspectors' report will be released this week, Mr. Cohen said.
Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition" that he's "confident" the Security Council "will not lift sanctions" against Iraq, when it reconsiders that issue today.
"In the area of chemical and biological weapons, we agree with the U.N. inspectors that there's been zero progress," Mr. Richardson said. "Therefore, there's been little justification to lift sanctions."
Iraq needs a clean bill of health from U.N. weapons inspectors, led by Australian Richard Butler, before the international community will lift sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf war.
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Cohen said the inspectors' report "indicates that Saddam Hussein has not fulfilled his obligation under existing resolutions, and indeed even the most recent agreement with Kofi Annan."
The defense secretary said inspectors for Unscom, as the U.N. team of experts is known, have "no credible evidence" to support Saddam's claims that he's destroyed an arsenal he previously acknowledged having. That arsenal includes 50 Scud missiles with chemical warheads, 25 missiles armed with biological agents, and four tons of deadly nerve gas.
Right after the Gulf war, the Iraqi leader denied having any "chemicals or biologicals," Mr. Cohen said, but later changed his story once he was "confronted with evidence" from the weapons inspectors.
In other comments in the Fox interview, Mr. Cohen:
- Urged Congress to approve a multibillion dollar emergency spending bill by early May or risk widespread furloughs of some of the Pentagon's 800,000 civilian employees. The bill would replenish Pentagon funds strained by deployments in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Persian Gulf and also would provide relief to U.S. communities hard hit by the winter's El Nino-driven storms.
- Warned that if the government fails to close military bases it no longer needs -- an extraordinarilysensitive issue in Congress -- the Pentagon would have to cut back on high-tech weapons for the future.
Mr. Cohen said he expects $21 billion in savings, money which he said could pay for 450 new advanced fighter planes or two new aircraft carriers, for example.
"If we don't get those kinds of savings, then those programs will have to be cut back or canceled. ... There are no easy choices anymore," he said.
As for Iraq, the agreement brokered in February by Mr. Annan granted Unscom inspectors access to eight presidential sites that previously had been off limits, averting U.S. air strikes against Iraq.
In the Fox interview, Mr. Cohen said all reports indicate inspectors "have not found anything in the so-called eight presidential palaces." But he added, "We should not be mesmerized by the palaces."
"I think it was rather unrealistic for anyone to expect that Saddam Hussein, having had all these months to clean out whatever was in the palaces, would then invite the inspectors in, and we should anticipate they'd find anything," the defense secretary said.
Far more significant, Mr. Cohen said, is the fact that Saddam has failed to prove that he's destroyed all of the chemical and biological weapons he previously acknowledged having.
In his latest report, Mr. Butler says his inspection teams made no progress over the past six months in verifying that Iraq had destroyed weapons of mass destruction.
On CNN, Mr. Richardson said there has been some "positive movement" by Iraq on the nuclear disarmament front. But he said the United States wants to see "more progress" in the areas of nuclear design and in such "concealment issues" as "nuclear exports and uranium enrichment."
He said a report by the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency, to be released by midweek, will address those issues.
Current U.N. sanctions against Iraq will be reviewed by the Security Council this week. According to reports from Mr. Richardson and others, the sanctions are likely to be extended despite Iraq's demand that they be lifted. Under current sanctions, Iraq can only sell a limited quantity of oil to buy goods such as medicine and food.
In Baghdad yesterday, Iraqi Culture and Information Minister Humam Abdul-Khaleq Abdul-Ghafur was quoted as saying today's Security Council meeting should focus only on lifting the U.N. embargo.
Another Iraqi official, Foreign Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, told the New York Times in an interview yesterday that the embargo is slowly eroding and that his country has become the recipient of increased donations of supplies and trade in recent months.
"This is happening whether the Americans like it or not," because other nations are fed up with hurting the Iraqi people, the foreign minister said.
Mr. Sahaf also attacked the Clinton administration's policy of trying to contain both Iraq and Iran.
"Nobody can isolate Iraq," he said. "It is a foolish policy. And the most foolish policy is the so-called dual containment."
- This article was based in part on wire service reports.
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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