Tuesday, Sep 10, 2002
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By Hasan Suroor
The warning came in a widely anticipated report based on the expert knowledge of former U.N. weapons' inspectors who were in Iraq before their mission was aborted in 1998, and other available evidence. ``We certainly believe he has the ability to put together a nuclear weapon very quickly in a matter of months. They were always aiming to be able to arm their ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon. So, it would be just a question of working on the physics to be able to marry the warhead to a ballistic missile,'' the report said as the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, argued that it would be "irresponsible'' not to do anything in the face of the threat from the Saddam regime. As pressure increased on Mr. Blair to recall Parliament from recess to debate the issue, with two former Speakers of the Commons joining the growing demand for a vote on whether Britain should support U.S. military intervention in Iraq, he agreed to brief senior MPs. He insisted that dealing with Iraq was not an "American preoccupation'' alone. ``It is our preoccupation and should be the preoccupation of the entire civilised community,'' he said on his return from Washington where he and the U.S. President, George W. Bush, agreed on a broad strategy to deal with Iraq. This was echoed by the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, who left for Washington on Monday to meet his U.S. counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, to firm up the ideas discussed by Mr Blair and Mr. Bush. But Mr Hoon also emphasised that "diplomacy should and must come first''. "Military action, if needed, should follow diplomacy,'' he was quoted as saying.| The IIS report, seen as a boost to Mr Blair's case for backing a U.S.-led action against Iraq, said that Baghdad had probably been successful in hiding considerable equipment, including long-range missiles and chemical and biological weapons, from the U.N. inspectors. Iraqi scientists, it added, had the necessary knowledge and expertise to reconstruct the country's biological and chemical weapons' programme. The report said that while Iraq did not seem to possess the "fissile building blocks'' required to produce a nuclear bomb, it could do so quickly if it were able to obtain the material "steal it or buy it in some way,'' as John Chipman of the IIS told the BBC. The International Atomic Energy Agency, meanwhile, was quoted as saying it had "no evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons at a site destroyed by U.N. inspectors, contrary to British and U.S. claims. These claims, it was stated, were based on commercial satellite pictures showing a "reconstructed building''. "You cannot draw any conclusions. The satellites were only looking at the top of a roof. You cannot tell without inspectors on the ground,'' an IAEA source told The Guardian.
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