Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Iraq Gives Reporters Tour of Factory

Aired August 12, 2002 - 12:46   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, now on to Iraq where the information minister today said there is no real need for U.S. weapons inspectors to come back because they -- quote -- "completed their work before they left in 1998."
As if to prove that contention, officials took reporters through a former germ factory that still looks pretty much the way it did when U.N. inspectors destroyed it.

CNN's Jane Arraf has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Behind this hand-lettered sign, the factory that produced animal vaccines, and a deadly biological agent. Iraq declared to U.S. weapons inspectors in 1995 that it produced the toxin that causes botulism here in the 1980s. It says it stopped before the 1991 Gulf War.

Now, Iraq has thrown open the factory doors to journalists to refute a defector's claim that it has revived the plant to produce biological weapons again.

GEN. HUSSAM AMIN, IRAQI MONITORING AUTHORITY: I would like to reiterate that Iraq has no prohibited activity, no prohibited activity since 1991.

ARRAF: In what seems to be the start of a public relations campaign, General Amin, one of Iraq's top weapons experts, held his first press conference since the U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.

AMIN: After the departure of the inspectors, the Western propaganda, which is controlled by Zionism and our enemies, start talking that this site is producing biological agents, such as anthrax and botulinum.

ARRAF: That site is called the Establishment for foot-and-mouth Vaccine, Endora (ph), on the edge of Baghdad. The factory was built in 1982. Iraq says it stopped producing vaccines there after the 1991 Gulf War when the U.N. embargo made it impossible to import materials.

Five years later, U.N. weapons inspectors essentially destroyed it to prevent Iraq from using the plant to reactivate its biological weapons program.

(on camera): UNSCOM dismantled this small fermenter to make sure it couldn't be used again, as it did everything else in this factory. The place is in shambles. There is debris everywhere. Here, there was a large fermenter that was actually used to grow the virus to make the vaccine. To make sure it was never used again. Weapons inspectors destroyed all these tubes with this axe.

(voice-over): In the factory, time seems to have stopped. Dusty bottles and documents lie where they were presumably left years ago. Iraq badly needs the vaccine to counter outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease.

It has asked the U.N. for permission to rebuild the factory. That now seems unlikely. Although weapons inspectors have dismantled the main components of the plant, suspicions in the U.S. over Iraq's weapons programs are harder to destroy.

Jane Arraf, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com