Across the Gulf, US top brass put the finishing touches to a high profile command exercise as Washington pressed on with efforts to persuade allies that it has the intelligence evidence against Iraq to justify contingency plans for war.
A Hercules C-130 transport aircraft arrived at the inspectors’ rear base in Cyprus carrying copies of Iraq’s 12,000 page declaration to be sent on to New York and Vienna, as a ninth day of inspections was underway at suspect sites in Fallujah west of the capital and al-Sadun park geological centre in the city.
The UN Security Council, which set Sunday’s deadline for delivery of the “currently accurate, full and complete declaration” of Iraq’s banned weapons programmes, has said that it will not release the document until late next week at the earliest, even to council members.
After a brief, chaotic press preview of the document Saturday, a top Iraqi official announced that the declaration did not reveal any prohibited activities.
“In this document we declare that Iraq is empty of any arms of mass destruction,” said Iraq’s chief liaison with UN weapons inspectors General Hossam Mohammad Amin.
As well as a main section covering 11,807 pages, the declaration includes two annexes composed of 529 megabytes of CD-Roms on Iraq’s back reports for the four years UN weapons inspectors were out of the country and a 325-page dossier on the fate of long-term monitoring of suspect sites.
UN arms experts charged with the marathon analysis of the document will be seeking to throw new light on the fate of a long list of banned weapons that remained unaccounted for when the last inspections mission pulled out in December 1998.
UN officials here have said they expect the process to take well over a week.
But US arms experts too will be making their own analysis of the declaration, as soon as it is released to Security Council members.
President George W. Bush warned that “what (Iraq) claims” is a “full and accurate” inventory must hold up to US scrutiny if it is to avoid US-led military action.
“The government of the US will analyse this declaration with respect to its credibility and compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1441,” a White House statement said.
“We will continue to work with other countries to achieve the ultimate goal of protecting the peace by ending Saddam Hussein’s pursuit and accumulation of weapons of mass destruction.”
However UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who will receive the Iraqi declaration, insisted he was keeping an open mind.
“We are not claiming that (Iraq) still has weapons of mass destruction but the British and the Americans are. They feel that they have secret material that proves it but we have been given no such material.
“We just have questions,” said Blix.
Washington’s key allies Canberra and London also adopted a wait and see attitude.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer described Iraq’s submission as “a good first step” while a Foreign Office spokesman urged the international community “not to rush to judgment.”
But Washington pressed on with war plans amid press reports that US forces in the Gulf now had enough heavy tanks, warships, aircraft, bombs and troops to launch an attack on Iraq sometime in January.
US Central Command chief General Tommy Franks led some 1,000 US and British personnel making final preparations for Monday’s launch of a week-long command exercise in the emirate of Qatar seen as a key trial of headquarters capabilities for any full-scale invasion of Iraq.
A similar exercise with the same name, “Internal Look”, preceded the 1991 Gulf war.
About 60,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, as well as about 200 warplanes, are now in or near the Gulf, making it possible for Bush to order an attack to topple Saddam and have it carried out within days, the New York Times reported citing senior military officials.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage meanwhile arrived in Japan on the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Australia, China and South Korea, hot on the heels of a similar diplomatic offensive by two senior US envoys in Europe.
Meanwhile 25 more weapons inspectors were heading to Baghdad from Larnaca Sunday.
The 21 from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and four from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) will join the 17 of the first contingent.
By the end of the year the United Nations intends to have 100 inspectors in Iraq.—AFP