In the US鈥檚 most ambitious effort yet to convince the world that Iraq has not given up its prohibited weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a battery of evidence on Wednesday ranging from high-tech intelligence to the testimony of defectors.
Iraq 鈥渉as made no effort to disarm as required by the international community,鈥� Powell told the UN Security Council in New York. 鈥淪addam and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.鈥� He warned the Security Council it is 鈥渋n danger of irrelevance鈥� if it does not respond.
Iraq continues to deny possessing banned weapons. But Powell stressed that the burden to prove it had disarmed was on Iraq itself: 鈥淭he issue before us is not how much time we give the inspectors to be frustrated, but how much longer we are willing to put up with Iraq鈥檚 non-compliance before we as the UN say, enough.鈥�
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The Security Council resolved in November 2002 that Iraq must either declare and destroy its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, or prove they do not exist. On 27 January, the UN鈥檚 chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told the UN that Iraq was not fulfilling this obligation.
UN resolution 1441 says failure by Iraq to comply will leave it facing 鈥渟erious consequences鈥�, understood to mean a US-led invasion of Iraq. The likelihood of the UN backing such an invasion is widely thought to depend on how convincing other Security Council members, such as France and China, find Powell鈥檚 presentation.
Below, 快猫短视频 sets out the key points of the presentation.
Intercepted telephone conversations reveal Iraqi officials instructing technicians to hide things, Powell said.
聲 A colonel says he has 鈥渆vacuated everything鈥�, but asks a clearly upset brigadier general what to tell inspectors about a 鈥渕odified vehicle from the Al Kindi company鈥�.
聲 An elite Republican Guard commander tells an officer to inspect for forbidden ammunition, then destroy the order.
聲 Another commander, fearing interception of radio communications, issues orders to 鈥渞emove the expression nerve agents whenever it comes up in the wireless instructions鈥�.
Surveillance photos show people removing items from buildings minutes before weapons inspectors arrived, Powell said.
聲 At a munitions dump, satellite photos show bunkers flanked by what Powell said were 鈥渟ignatures鈥� for a chemical weapons store: a decontamination truck and a guard outpost. Two of these bunkers were subsequently photographed without trucks and guards 鈥� just as UN inspectors鈥� vehicles were arriving.
聲 Satellite photos show items being removed by truck from a number of sites on 25 November 2002, the day before UN inspectors arrived. The sites include a ballistic missile site, the Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, which was previously used for bioweapons, and the Ibn Al-Haytham missile development centre.
聲 Satellite photos of a former weapons facility at Al Mussayyib showed what defectors reportedly confirmed were trucks being loaded with chemical agents. Later photos show all the soil at the site being bulldozed away.
聲 In December, Iraq declared that it possesses unmanned aerial vehicles with an 80 kilometre range. But in July 2002 aerial photos revealed a UAV that went for 500 km around a race track 鈥渙n autopilot鈥�, said Powell. Iraq has also fitted such craft with spray tanks for chemical or biological weapons, he added.
Defectors鈥� evidence was also revealing, Powell said.
聲 In November, warheads and launchers armed with biological weapons were being moved from near Baghdad to be dispersed in the western desert.
聲 Four separate defectors, engineers and army officers, described mobile biological weapons laboratories and production facilities mounted on semi-articulated trucks and railway cars. Ominously, these were said to carry spray driers of the sort used to produce inhalable aerosols of biological agents, such as the anthrax powder used in the US in 2001.