Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002
Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002 |
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By Atul Aneja
``The problem is not related to the arrival of the inspectors or starting their work in Iraq,'' the state-run al-Iraq newspaper said in a front-page editorial. "The American regime wants to launch an aggression under the pretext that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.'' Some security analysts point out that Iraq sees the rising intensity of the air raids in the no-fly zones in the last few days as an indicator of the U.S. intent to use force. They are of the view that the U.S. had changed the rules of engagement in the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. Air power, they say, is now being increasingly used to suppress Iraq's air defences. The U.S. Air Force is reportedly beefing up the number of aircraft in the region and has reserved several air corridors for use in its possible area of operations. The U.S., however, has rejected this view, pointing out that its planes had only responded to the Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. According to a statement by the U.S. European Command that maintains the no-flight zone over northern Iraq, Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery from positions northeast of Mosul, to which the coalition planes responded by dropping precision-guided bombs. After the Gulf war, the U.S. and British planes patrol key areas in northern and southern Iraq, with the stated objective of protecting the Kurds, who reside in northern Iraq, and the Shias, who are in strength in the southern parts of the country. Aware of the delicate situation, Iraq's neighbours are mounting fresh efforts to avert a war by seeking to ensure that weapons inspections are carried out fairly. Syria's Information Minister, Adnan Omran, told The Hindu that Damascus would want an international Eminent Persons Group drawn from a variety of countries, including India, to be formed, and this group should be positioned in Iraq during the period of inspections. This group should ensure that the U.N. inspectors conduct their probe in an objective and professional manner, he said. Syria, the only Arab country in the 15-member U.N. Security Council, is also a strong advocate of including Arab experts in the U.N. inspection team. Meanwhile, Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. inspectors, said in Baghdad that the U.N. inspections team leader, Hans Blix, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, would be speaking to the Iraqi counterparts on political and diplomatic issues before leaving Iraq on Wednesday. AP reports from Baghdad: Iraq will meet a December 8 deadline for declaring whether it still holds any weapons of mass destruction, a senior adviser to President Saddam Hussein said Tuesday. Following a meeting with the U.N. weapons inspectors, Amir al-Saadi told reporters that Baghdad had repeated assurances that it would cooperate fully with the inspection team. ``Within 30 days, as the resolution says, a report from Iraq will be submitted on all the nuclear, chemical, biological and missile files,'' al-Saadi said.
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