BAGHDAD, March 2: Iraq insisted Sunday that it was doing its utmost to remove any “excuses” for a US-led war, destroying banned Al-Samoud missiles and sitting down for talks on deadly biological agents.
“If war today takes place, it is not because Iraq did not do all it should regarding disarmament,” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s top weapons advisor, General Amer al-Saadi, told a press conference here.
“ My task, my only task (is) to remove all excuses for waging war.” Saadi said a first round of concrete technical talks to quantify destroyed germ weapons started late Sunday at UN headquarters in Baghdad, as UN experts supervised the bulldozing of prohibited missile systems in two sites.
He said excavations had turned up significant traces of anthrax and VX nerve agent, whose destruction UN inspectors have been seeking to certify for years.
Excavations at the al-Aziziya air base southwest of Baghdad had uncovered fragments of nearly all 157 bombs filled with tons of toxic agents which Iraq insists it destroyed unilaterally in 1991, Saadi said.
“So far we have reached a figure not quite 157, but we are nearing it, there is work in progress.
“So far, more than eight (bombs) have been found which were intact, not perforated, which could be tested for the material inside.”
As for the anthrax which Iraq also claimed to have destroyed, Saadi said that material was at a site called al-Hakam, and was the subject of a meeting late Sunday between newly arrived UN biological experts and Iraqi authorities.
He said the 1.5 tonnes of VX which the United Nations says remain to be accounted for were “unilaterally destroyed in a dumping site near al-Muthanna State Establishment, and we have made analyses which strongly indicate that the total material was destroyed there.”
That was also being discussed in Sunday evening’s talks, he said, adding: “The results that we have made so far indicate something which is near, quite near, that total (that) was destroyed there.”
Meanwhile, Saadi said a second batch of six Al-Samoud 2 missiles were destroyed under UN supervision Sunday, bringing the total to 10 in two days, while a second casting chamber used in the manufacturing process for the missiles had also been destroyed.
UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix had ordered Iraq to scrap the missiles after UN experts said they exceeded the 150-kilometre (93-mile) range allowed under disarmament terms.
Saadi said Iraq had 100 Al-Samoud 2 missiles, with another 20 still on the assembly line.
But he warned that Iraq would stop destroying the missiles if the US decided to wage war against Iraq unilaterally.
“If it turns out that America is not going the legal way, why should we continue (with the destruction of prohibited missiles)?”
He said Iraq was not making pictures available of the missile destruction so as not to hurt the feelings of the Iraqi people because the Al-Samoud 2 were “legitimate” and Baghdad had only accepted their destruction to avoid a war.
The missile destruction as well as private interviews with Iraqi germ and missile experts are considered key tests of Iraq’s willingness to cooperate with the inspectors probing its alleged weapons programmes.—AFP
