The Hindu : Iraq agrees to use of surveillance planes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003

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Iraq agrees to use of surveillance planes

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington Feb. 10. Iraq has agreed in unconditional terms for the use of the American U-2 surveillance planes and has pledged legislation next week that would outlaw the use of weapons of mass destruction.

"The inspectors are now free to use the American U-2s as well as French and Russian planes," Iraq's Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad al Douri has said.

A letter to this effect has been delivered by Mr. Al Douri to the office of the United Nations Monitoring,Verification and Inspection Commission which is headed by Hans Blix. It has been said that the formal letter was written by Amer al Saadi, an adviser to the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, and the country's chief liaison to the weapons inspectors.

The use of U-2s had been a major bone of contention between Iraq and the United Nations with Baghdad making the point that it cannot allow overflight of the spy planes at a time when Britain and the U.S. were planning and preparing for war against Iraq. The regime in Iraq is apparently now telling the U.N. that Baghdad would continue to encourage its scientists to accept private interviews, another stumbling block over the last two months or so.

In the light of the latest visit of the top weapons inspectors, Iraq has allowed its top scientists to talk to inspectors in private without the presence of "minders". Iraq also turned over additional documents on past weapons of mass destruction programmes which have prompted the top inspectors to come away from Baghdad sensing a "new beginning".

It remains to be seen how the administration reacts and responds to the latest development; but in the past, the U.S. President, George W Bush, has expressed scepticism of any last minute offers of cooperation.

In Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday, Mr. Bush continued to have some tough words for Saddam Hussein. "Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes", he said.

`War only as a last resort'

AP, Reuters report:

France, Russia and Germany on Monday issued a joint declaration calling for strengthened U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq, part of a diplomatic initiative aimed at disarming Saddam Hussein without war.

The French President, Jacques Chirac, reading the declaration in Paris in the presence of the visiting Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said Iraq's weapons capability must be neutralised as quickly as possible but that waging war to achieve the objective should only be considered as a last resort.

NATO split

In Brussels, France, Germany and Belgium split NATO today by blocking proposals to start planning for the deployment of AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot missiles and anti-chemical and anti-biological warfare teams to Turkey — an action Washington said threw the alliance's credibility into question.

The three NATO rebels, trying to slow the rush to war, say moves to defend Turkey would signal that a conflict had begun.

Turkey responded by invoking NATO's Article IV, which says "parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence of security of any of the parties is threatened". The Turkish move came at a meeting of NATO ambassadors at the alliance headquarters.

The U.S. Ambassador to NATO denounced what he called "a most unfortunate decision by three allies to prevent NATO from assisting the legitimate defence needs of Turkey," which fears reprisals if U.S. forces invade Iraq from its territory.

"Because of their actions, NATO is now facing a crisis of credibility,'' the envoy, Nicholas Burns, told reporters.

The division in NATO over whether to use diplomacy or go to war to make Iraq disarm opened wide as Mr. Blix said he saw no new evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in papers Baghdad gave him at the weekend.

"This time they presented some papers to us in which they focused upon new issues. Not new evidence really as far as I can see, but they have nevertheless focused on real open issues and that is welcome," Mr. Blix said on arriving in Athens from Baghdad.

Anticipating the blocking move, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, earlier denounced it as "a disgrace". He said in an interview with eight European newspapers that the countries behind it would be "judged by their own people and the other members of the (NATO) alliance".

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