More Surface-To-Air Missiles In Iraq

Air patrols flown almost daily over Iraq by American and British pilots are getting riskier, the top U.S. military officer says.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraq has moved more surface-to-air missile batteries into the southern and northern "no-fly" zones enforced by allied pilots.

The additions are the largest in the past couple of years, Myers said Monday, although he also noted that Iraq has a history of moving such forces in and out of the zones.

Myers did not say how many missile batteries had been added. He said they were moved in the past several days.

The United States, France and Britain created the flight-interdiction zones after the 1991 Gulf War to prevent the Iraqi military from using aircraft against minority Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south. The zones are an irritant to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who says they violate Iraq's sovereignty. He has offered to reward any defender who downs an American pilot.

U.S. President George W. Bush has declared Saddam a menace and vowed to remove him as Iraq's leader, although the administration says it has not decided how that goal will be achieved.

Bush has said all options are available, including a military campaign to overthrow Saddam if the Iraqi leader continues to deny admission to U.N. weapons inspectors, whose job was to check if Baghdad has dismantled its means to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The inspectors have been barred from Iraq since 1998.

Talks between Iraq and the United Nations on the return of the inspectors were due to begin in April, but Iraq has asked for a delay on grounds that talks would be dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if held now.

Myers provided few specifics about Saddam's latest moves to strengthen his defenses in the "no-fly" zones, but he said newly arrived missile batteries were involved in recent confrontations involving U.S. pilots.

He said allied pilots in northern Iraq have been threatened by Iraqi air defenses three times since April 1.

"In one case, on the 19th, our fighters launched two missiles at a surface-to-air missile system near Mosul," Myers said. "And this particular system had threatened them during their flight."

On April 15 an allied air patrol in southern Iraq responded with a guided bomb strike on a surface-to-air missile system radar, he said.

Last year Iraqi air defenders frequently challenged allied air patrols by targeting them with radars or firing anti-aircraft artillery guns or surface-to-air missiles. But there have been relatively few challenges this year. The U.S. attack on April 15 was the first in southern Iraq since Jan. 21.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking at the news conference with Myers, said he knew of no "notable difference" recently in Saddam's behavior and the posture of his military.

"He tends to move things around and do things that are inconsistent with the U.N. resolutions, and his rhetoric has historically been provocative and favoring terrorists," Rumsfeld said.

Myers was asked to describe the additional threat posed by the extra surface-to-air missiles in Iraq.

"If they're moved inside the `no-fly' zones, obviously, that increases risks to the pilots that are patrolling in those zones," he said. "And that's what's been happening. And beyond that, I don't want to get into the specifics of exactly where." He added that they were in both the northern and southern zones.

When Bush took office in January 2001, Saddam increased his challenges to allied air patrols. Bush responded on Feb. 16, 2001, by ordering a coordinated series of strikes on air defense radars and other targets in and around Baghdad. Officials said later the attacks were in part a response to suspicions that Iraq had upgraded its air defense network using Chinese-supplied fiber-optic cables.

Asked Monday whether the Chinese were still helping Iraq, Rumsfeld replied, "I don't know that they've stopped."