The Hindu : U.S. warns Iraq of stern measures

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 21, 2002

International

International

U.S. warns Iraq of stern measures

Washington Dec. 20. In a move which could trigger a U.S. strike against Iraq, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has declared that Iraq had flagrantly violated the United Nations disarmament resolution.

``Iraq's declaration totally fails to meet the Security Council resolution for an accurate and complete accounting of weapons,'' Mr. Powell told news persons on Thursday.

Mr. Powell's declaration came on the heels of two top U.N. weapons inspectors' statement that there was little new in the Iraqi declaration.

Mr. Powell said the declaration, is a ``catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions.''

``The world must view this with great scepticism,'' he added.

Warning Iraq of strict measures, Mr. Powell said, there was a ``practical limit to how much longer you can go down the road of non-cooperation.''

``Iraq was well on its way to losing this last chance,'' he added.

Baghdad's declaration did not even cover information that U.N. inspectors had unearthed before they left in late 1998, Mr. Powell said.

Citing an example, the Secretary of State said that the inspectors had reached the conclusion then that Iraq could have produced 26,000 litres of anthrax, three times what Iraq had declared.

However, the Iraqi documents is silent on these supplies, he added.

``We have seen this game again and again of attempting to sow confusion to buy time,'' Mr. Powell said.

The U.S., he said, would push for interviews with Iraqi scientists and other associated with Iraq's weapons programme at sites outside that country so that they could be unconstrained.

Administration officials have been quoted in the media here as saying that the U.S. President, George W Bush, was likely to make a decision on war with Iraq only in late January or early February. Asked whether there is a deadline for Iraq to comply with the U.N. resolution, Mr. Powell said there is no calendar deadline "but, obviously, there is a practical limit to how much longer you can just go down the road of non-cooperation and how much time the inspectors can be given to do their work.''

He also insisted that if U.N. presents a list of names of scientists and technicians involved in weapons of mass destruction to Iraqi government, "they are required to provide these individuals for interview, and for interview in a safe place, and for their families to be in a safe place where they will not be in danger of losing their lives for telling the truth. And so we are hard at work on all of these modalities.''

On the "material breach'' of the Security Council, Mr. Powell said: "I think perhaps too much has been made of the term.'' "Material breach'' is a term that comes from the law that says a party to a commitment has failed in meeting the terms of that commitment.

"I don't think we are devaluing the term. I think we are using the term to make it clear to the world that, once again, we have a breach on the part of Iraq with respect to its obligations and, therefore, the spots have not changed.

"Now, I will let the other members of the (U.N. Security) Council make their own judgement as to whether they wish to characterise it as such right now,'' Mr. Powell said.

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