Double Checking In Iraq
U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons Iraq may be hiding visited three new sites Monday, including a water purification station and the government's main health laboratory.
One inspection team headed toward the border with Iran, Information Ministry officials said, but its destination was not immediately known.
Also Monday, 13 U.S. religious leaders and experts on a humanitarian mission to Iraq were scheduled to visit a hospital, mosque and a church in Baghdad. The delegation, which arrived Sunday, is headed by Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
Speaking to another visiting delegation, of 140 peace activists from Spain, President Saddam Hussein's chief science adviser Amir al-Saadi repeated Iraq's assertion that it has no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons or the missiles to deliver them. If Iraq can convince the U.N. inspectors of that, it could avoid a threatened U.S. military strike.
In Washington Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.N. inspectors, working with U.S.-supplied intelligence information, should be given time to ferret out Iraq's weapons before any decision is made to apply military force.
On CBS News' Face The Nation, Powell insisted Saddam Hussein's regime posed a more immediate threat than North Korea.
"I think the case has been made, maybe not to the satisfaction of all, that this is a regime that has pursued weapons of mass destruction in the past, has had weapons of mass destruction in the past, and we believe continues to have weapons of mass destruction and has lost none of its desire to produce them," he said.
Still, Powell said the United States has yet to decide whether to attack Iraq.
"The president has not made a decision yet with respect to the use of military force or with respect to going back to the United Nations," Powell said in another interview. "And of course, we are positioning ourselves and positioning our military forces for whatever might be required."
Seven U.N. inspection teams carried out separate inspections in Iraq Monday. The inspectors have been in Iraq for more than a month, arriving four years after the last examinations by a previous U.N. organization that left Iraq shortly before U.S. and British bombing in 1998.
On Monday, the latest teams of arms experts visited three new sites — the Central Health Laboratory, the General Commission of Plants Protection and the Al Mahmoudiya water purification station on the Euphrates River.
The inspectors spent an hour at the water plant, where they examined yellow cylinders filled with chlorine and white bags containing another agent for water purification. The materials have both civilian and military uses.
One team also re-examined the al-Samood factory, about 25 miles west of Baghdad. The factory, part of the Al Karama State Company, manufactures components for al-Samood missiles, which have a range of more than 30 miles.
Under U.N. resolutions adopted after the Gulf War, Iraq cannot possess missiles with a range greater than 90 miles. U.S. and British intelligence reports contend Iraq is extending the al-Samood's range beyond permitted limits.
Other teams revisited Al Nidaa factory south of Baghdad, which manufactures mechanical parts and equipment for different types of missiles, and the Thaat Al Sawari plant, a fiberglass production plant in the al-Taji area, 18 miles north of Baghdad.
While repeating that Iraq has no forbidden weapons, al-Saadi accused the United States of playing politics and ignoring Iraqi efforts to cooperate with the weapons inspectors who arrived in November under U.N. Security Council resolution 1441.
Iraq has maintained it is following to the letter the latest U.N. resolution, but leaders of the new inspection program have said Iraq's required declaration on its past weapons programs issued Dec. 7 is incomplete. The United States was severely critical of the declaration and has repeatedly threatened to attack Iraq.
Al-Saadi said Iraq did not fear war as long as the United States abides by the Security Council resolution.
"If America chose a different path, that is its business, but the whole world will see this action," he said.
Also Monday, Germany's foreign minister gained public backing from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and a senior figure in his Greens party for refusing to rule out German support for U.N. Security Council authorization of a war against Iraq, despite Berlin's reservations about an attack.
Germany joins the Security Council for two years on Jan. 1. In a weekend interview, Fischer said that "no one can predict" how it might vote if the question arose — stirring tensions within Fischer's pacifist-rooted Greens party, with left-wingers insisting that Germany should vote against any war.
Schroeder angered President Bush earlier this year by adopting a strictly anti-war line during a tough reelection battle, straining the ties between Washington and one of its closest allies.