Warning Iraq that it is "five minutes to midnight," chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix on Tuesday said Baghdad urgently needed to show it was cooperating with inspectors when he visited there this weekend.
But on the eve of Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the U.N. Security Council, Blix again disputed U.S. assertions that Iraq was trying to foil inspectors under their very noses, such as moving equipment before his teams arrived.
"I am pleading for the Iraqis to enter the cooperation on substance, Blix said, adding that "we do not have the same determination on substance as we have on process."
He said there was still time for Iraq to reveal any banned weapons it may have or to give evidence about how they were destroyed. Iraq, he said, needed to "give us hope."
"We all know the situation is serious," Blix said about a U.S. military attack. "I don't think the decision is final. I don't think that the end is there, that the date has been set, but I think that we are moving closer and closer to it."
"And therefore it seems to me that the Iraqi leadership must be well aware of that," Blix said, according to Reuters. "Isn't there five minutes to midnight in your political assessment?" he asked.
The expression derives from a "Doomsday Clock" the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has kept since 1947 to gauge chances of a nuclear war.
Blix said the responses he had seen from Iraqi officials did not indicate Baghdad was prepared to hand over critical information omitted in its 12,000-page arms declaration submitted on Dec. 7. Iraq, he said, had to assure Security Council members that "it will actively seek and present any items or programs which are proscribed or else if they are not there, to seek and present credible evidence for their absence."
For example, he suggested a commission of inquiry Iraq organized after inspectors discovered a dozen chemical warheads last month be given more power to look for any materials relating to biological weapons also.
It should look around the country and see what is hidden, he said. "Maybe they can give it more power. Maybe they can extend it to biological weapons," said Blix, in charge of accounting for Iraq's chemical, biological and ballistic arms.
On Powell's address, Blix said he assumed the secretary of state would not be indicating sites that the inspectors should visit that he had not revealed earlier.
"It is more likely to be based upon satellite imagery and upon intercepts of telephone conversations or knowledge about Iraqi procurement of technical material or chemicals," Blix said.
But in answer to questions, Blix said he had reports but no evidence of the mobile laboratories as the United States has said. "We have never found one," he said. He also disputed allegations from some U.S. officials that his teams leaked information to Iraq.
"It has been hinted in the media and observed that Iraq has sent people to sites where we are going to go in a couple of days time. There has been some intimation there might have been a leak," Blix said.
"If there were any risk of a leak, then of course we would look at it seriously and see how it could how remedied. But at the present time we do not have the impression that any such leaks have occurred," he said.
Another example he gave was on Iraq's trying to import aluminum tubes, which the United States repeatedly said were for the purpose of enriching uranium. Blix said there were still "differing views" and that the controversy no longer "had the same kind of certitude as at the beginning."
Powell, who has promised to give a "convincing case" that Iraq is flouting UN disarmament resolutions, spent Tuesday rehearsing his speech at a top New York hotel.
But pressing the US case against widespread opposition to an immediate war, the secretary of state also met China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, whose country has urged a political solution to the crisis.
Tang said ahead of the meeting that "China has always supported that the main thing is to keep the peace."
Powell was to meet with Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov before the council meeting on Wednesday morning and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw after.
U.S. President George W. Bush, also seeking to muster support among fellow veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, spoke by telephone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, but made little apparent progress.
Putin urged continued UN weapons inspections and said their work was the "key" to determining future action on Iraq. Earlier, Russia declared that it would "carefully examine" new US evidence on Iraq's arms program while stressing it had seen nothing to justify military strikes. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
