UN sees images of missile carriers
Oliver Burkeman in New York Thursday March 7, 2002 The Guardian
Satellite surveillance shows that Iraq has converted 1,000 trucks received under the oil-for-food programme into missile launchers and other military vehicles, the US government claimed last night.
In a provocatively timed move, the US presented the evidence to members of the United Nations security council just hours before today's crucial meeting between the Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.
"Specifically, these are dump trucks that we have seen that were stripped and diverted for possible usage in air defence and missile systems - they could be used for launching missiles," a US official told the Guardian on condition of anonymity. "We saw a large number of them in military bases and barracks and garrisons, in clear violation of sanctions."
The timing of yesterday's revelations also comes six days before Vice-President Dick Cheney meets Tony Blair in London - prompting suggestions that the US was seeking to provoke a confrontation with Baghdad just as the Bush administration attempts to shore up support for a possible military strike against Iraq.
The Americans showed members of the security council's sanctions monitoring committee satellite shots which, they said, showed cargo trucks being offloaded at the Iraqi port of Um Qasr from last July onwards. Subsequent pictures appeared to show the same trucks, modified for military use, relocated to bases around the country. Some had been converted to carry 155mm howitzers; some were shown parked outside a missile development centre; others showed up as combat vehicles in the Army Day parade through Baghdad in December.
The official said the trucks had been received under the oil-for-food scheme, rather than being smuggled into the country. He said the committee was shown a videotape of Iraqi TV which showed the trucks as the ones purchased through the programme, which allows Iraq to sell oil as long as the proceeds are spent on humanitarian goods or used to pay reparations.
"Either way it's a violation of sanctions," a British UN official said, conceding that it was "not altogether clear" that the vehicles were bought through the programme.
But critics accused the United States of seeking to force the secretary general's hand on Iraq, eliminating Mr Annan's room for manoeuvre.
"The US wants to undermine [the Iraqi meeting with the UN], pure and simple," Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, said yesterday.
"I'm not challenging the US evidence, but when members of the Bush administration say that time is running out for Iraq to comply with sanctions, they show a level of arrogance that detracts from their legitimate concerns."
The US official put the timing down to a coincidence of scheduling. "We'd been trying to arrange this for some time, and we really weren't trying to do it the day before," he said, adding it would be up to the security council to decide how it chose to deal with the evidence.