|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Hussein Ordered Several Long-Range Missile Programs Prior to War, Aziz Says
Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz has told U.S. forces that, while Iraq did not possess stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had ordered several secret programs to develop or purchase long-range ballistic missiles, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Oct. 6). Aziz has described one discussion he had with Hussein in 1999, when Hussein said that U.N. Resolution 687 prohibited Iraq from possessing long-range missiles only if they were armed with weapons of mass destruction. Aziz told Hussein, “No, it’s a range limit” and that all missiles with a range beyond 150 kilometers were banned, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with interrogation reports. Hussein then said, “No, I want to go ahead,” according to the senior U.S. official (Steve Coll, Washington Post, Nov. 3). The United States has learned through captured Iraqi documents and interrogations with Iraqi officials that two teams of Yugoslav missile experts traveled to Iraq in 2001 to help extend the range of Iraqi Scud missiles by attaching several rocket motors together, a senior U.S. official said. The official added that the Yugoslav experts and experts from a second country worked in Iraq into 2003 (Kempe/Cloud, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 3). “We know the regime had the greatest problem with the 150-kilometer limit” on missile ranges, said Hamish Killip, a former U.N. arms inspector now working with the Iraq Survey Group. Hussein and senior Iraqi military officers viewed the U.N.-imposed missile-range limit “as an invasion of their sovereignty,” Killip said. The Iraq Survey Group, however, has found no similar evidence that Iraq was willing after 1999 to violate U.N. bans on the development of weapons of mass destruction, officials said. “They seem to have made a mental separation between long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction,” Killip said. Several high-ranking captured Iraqi officials have said Hussein believed that Iraq gained international respect by the perception that it had weapons of mass destruction, according to the Washington Post. Hussein believed other Arab countries respected him because they believed he possessed weapons of mass destruction, and Hussein did not want to reveal otherwise, the captured officials said. “From a military point of view, if you did have a special weapon, you should keep it secret to achieve tactical surprise. … But he wanted the whole region to look at him as a grand leader. And during the period when the Americans were massing troops in Kuwait, he wanted to deter the prospect of war,” Iraqi Maj. Gen. Walid Mohammed Taiee said in an interview with the Post. When asked by interrogators if Hussein was also trying to mislead Iran because of fears that Tehran might be developing similar weapons, Aziz said Hussein discounted the idea that Iran posed a threat, the Post reported. Aziz said, “Every time I brought up the issue with Saddam, he said, ‘Don’t worry about the Iranians. If they ever get WMD, the Americans and Israelis will destroy them,’” according to the senior U.S. official familiar with interrogation reports (Coll, Washington Post). ElBaradei Calls For Return of U.N. Inspectors to IraqMeanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that U.N. weapons inspectors should be allowed to return to Iraq as soon as possible to “finish the job.” All the evidence that has been made public so far “supports our tentative conclusion before the war that we haven’t seen any evidence that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program,” ElBaradei said. “We need to bring that file to closure,” he said. “We need to show the international community that Iraq is completely clean from any effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapon program,” ElBaradei added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 2).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
