U.S. Is Pressuring Inspectors in Iraq to Aid Defections
By PATRICK E. TYLER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - The Bush administration has stepped up pressure on Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspection team to identify key Iraqi weapons scientists and spirit them out of Iraq so they can be offered asylum in exchange for disclosing where Saddam Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction, according to administration and United Nations officials.
High-level negotiations on the issue became visible when Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, met with Mr. Blix in New York on Monday and pressed the issue of interviewing Iraqi scientists. The administration is offering to set up a witness protection program for defecting Iraqi scientists, thus enabling a more aggressive approach.
A United States official at the United Nations said that the talks on how to handle Iraqi scientists were continuing and that the initial message to Mr. Blix, a chief arms inspector, was that Washington wanted him to "make it a priority" to use the full powers conveyed by the Security Council resolution passed on Nov. 8.
The resolution demands that Iraq provide "unimpeded" and "unrestricted" access "to all officials and other persons" that inspectors decide they want to interview "inside or outside Iraq."...
An intense argument is under way, however, on almost all of the details of a protection program. Some American officials want the United Nations team to be aggressive in identifying scientists and demanding that they leave the country, perhaps without the scientists' permission. Mr. Blix is said to be arguing that the United Nations cannot, in effect, abduct people against their will. His view is being backed by most of the United Nations hierarchy and the State Department in Washington, officials said....
United Nations officials, uneasy with soliciting or demanding defections, have been searching for a means to conduct private interviews with Iraqi scientists inside the country. American officials have asserted that this is out of the question since the inspection teams are under intense surveillance by Iraqi intelligence. The officials said they were aware of a large number of scientists who have knowledge of Iraqi weapons programs. Some would like to see Mr. Blix submit a list of names to the Iraqi government and demand to interview those individuals.
Still, Mr. Blix is said to be resisting any idea that the United Nations can force Iraqi scientists to take the life-threatening step of leaving Iraq for interrogation.
"That's where the problem is," said an administration official sympathetic to the concerns Mr. Blix and other United Nations officials have expressed. "Taking someone against their will is contrary to the whole United Nations concept. You'd fracture the U.N. consensus."...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/middleeast/06INSP.html> *****
***** White House demands weapons inspectors abduct Iraqi scientists
By Bill Vann and Barry Grey 7 December 2002
The Bush administration is pressuring UN weapons inspectors to kidnap Iraqi scientists, spirit them out of the country and hand them over to US intelligence for interrogation. This latest scheme to concoct a pretext for war -- in defiance of every tenant of international law and democratic rights -- is a devastating self-exposure of the war camarilla in Washington.
According to administration officials, the scientists, together with their families, would be taken from Iraq -- if necessary, against their will -- and placed in a "witness protection program." Thus the UN, at the bidding of Washington, would treat Iraqi civilians as criminals.
This proposal -- worthy of Mafia gangsters -- should be taken by world public opinion as an indication of the type of "democracy" the US intends to establish, at the point of a bayonet, should it succeed in invading and occupying the country.
In a meeting in New York on December 2, Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, reportedly prodded chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix to push ahead with the plan to abduct scientists. "Some American officials want the UN team to be aggressive in identifying scientists and demanding that they leave the country, perhaps without their permission," the New York Times reported Friday. "Mr. Blix is said to be arguing that the UN cannot, in effect, abduct people against their will."
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on Friday dodged a question about whether the US was advocating the abduction of Iraqi scientists. "I can't speak to all scenarios," he said. "Obviously, if somebody is willing to leave the country, it's a much easier matter." Fleischer's evasive reply stopped well short of a denial.
For his part, Blix angrily rejected the US proposal, declaring Friday: "We are not going to abduct anybody and the UN is not going to run a defection agency."...
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/iraq-d07.shtml> ***** -- Yoshie
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