The Daily Tele­graph is report­ing that United Nations weapons inspec­tors have uncov­ered evi­dence that Iraq is con­tin­u­ing its attempts to build nuclear weapons in defi­ance of UNSCR 1441. The paper reports that “The dis­cov­ery was made fol­low­ing spot checks last week on the homes of two Iraqi nuclear physi­cists in Bagh­dad.“
U.N. offi­cials had no com­ment on the doc­u­ments, the paper said, but “a West­ern diplo­mat closely involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Saddam’s nuclear capa­bil­ity” was quoted as con­firm­ing that the doc­u­ments were gen­uine.
“These are not old doc­u­ments,” the diplo­mat was quoted as say­ing. “They are new and they relate to on-going work tak­ing place in Iraq to develop nuclear weapons. They had been hid­den at the … homes [of physi­cists Faleh Has­san and Shaker al Jibouri] on Saddam’s per­sonal orders. Fur­ther­more, no men­tion of this work is made in the Iraqi dossier that was sub­mit­ted to the UN last Decem­ber.“
Con­fus­ingly, Voice of Amer­ica said that yes, doc­u­ments out­lin­ing research on ura­nium enrich­ment had been dis­cov­ered at the sci­en­tists’ home, but that they dated from the 1980s, accord­ing to nuclear con­trol chief Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, who, along with chief weapons inspec­tor Dr. Hans Blix, holds Iraq’s fate in their hands.
[Update: The Asso­ci­ated Press, via a story on Salon​.com, is report­ing that the doc­u­ments date back to a project can­celled in 1988. Has­san said the pro­gram was declared in 1991 and that he kept the doc­u­ments for “his stu­dents.”]
So who’s right? Is it El Baradei? Or the unnamed “West­ern diplo­mat”? I have to ques­tion the verac­ity of sources who go unnamed but are said to be “closely involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Saddam’s nuclear capa­bil­ity.” Could that be West­ern diplo­mat be an Amer­i­can try­ing to make the case to a jit­tery British pub­lic that they should lay off Tony Blair and get with the pro­gram? Isn’t the tim­ing of this rev­e­la­tion curi­ous, con­sid­er­ing that the White House’s res­i­dent dove — and loyal trooper — Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell told the Ger­man news­pa­per Sued­deutsche Zeitung that the United States would make a “per­sua­sive case” that Iraq hasn’t coop­er­ated and has weapons of mass destruc­tion by month’s end?
It’s a curi­ous dis­crep­ancy with huge impli­ca­tions. How­ever, with the Jan. 27 dead­line bear­ing down — the date on which Blix will deliver an interim report on the progress of the weapons inspec­tors — the United Nations has made clear that it does not see Blix’s dossier as a trig­ger for war, no doubt fur­ther frus­trat­ing the United States. Amer­ica wants the Jan. 27 report to be final and com­plete and has said it will try to foil any exten­sion of the inspec­tion regime into March.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I believe that, yeah, Saddam’s prob­a­bly got chem­i­cal and/or bio­log­i­cal weapons. But with even Britain get­ting bull­ish on inspec­tions — mainly because Down­ing Street believes there will be a “large nuclear find” in the near future — I think the United States needs to calm down and let the inspec­tors do their jobs. I think there’s a good chance that Sad­dam can be defanged with­out a lot of peo­ple dying, but then defang­ing Sad­dam has never been the real rea­son to attack Iraq now, has it?