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CNN Live At Daybreak

Scott Ritter's New Mission

Aired September 10, 2002 - 06:31   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: As a United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter visited Iraqi sites suspected of containing weapons of mass destruction. Well, Ritter is now back in Iraq, still touring the sites, but on a much different mission.
CNN's James Martone followed him to Tuwaitha for this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMES MARTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scott Ritter took some international journalists to the controversial Salman Pak camp to investigate the place he said he'd only seen in satellite photos when he was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq.

SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The reason why no inspectors were here is that when we took a look at this facility, we asked for clarification from the Central Intelligence Agency and from British intelligence, what is this site? Both intelligence services said, this is a hostage rescue training facility, a counterterrorist training facility.

MARTONE: Now at the site, an Iraqi anti-terrorist squad, says the country's Interior Ministry, set up in the 1980s with British help to protect Iraqi airways from would-be hijackers. Iraqi opposition groups in the West have claimed the site trained terrorists, maybe even Qaeda. Not so, says Ritter, a former U.S. military man, who participated in the 1991 Gulf War to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

RITTER: That has nothing to do with September 11. America cannot go to war because this airplane is parked in this place, and some Iraqi defector claims that it was used to train the hijackers of September 11.

MARTONE: Another reason not to go to war, says Ritter, are U.S. and U.K. claims that Iraq is still amassing banned weapons. He says U.N. inspectors in their eight years in Iraq were unable to come up with any proof that this former nuclear facility in Tuwaitha, a site 20 kilometers south of Baghdad, was still a nuclear threat.

(on camera): The Tuwaitha site was bombed first in 1981 by the Israelis, then again during the Gulf War in 1991.

(voice-over): Journalists were invited here Monday by Iraq's Foreign Ministry.

SAAED AL-MAOUSAW, IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTRY ADVISOR: Well, what we are doing now is telling the international community facts through you.

MARTONE: Foreign Ministry adviser, Saaed al-Maousaw, showed international media copies of U.K. satellite photos that Britain and the U.S. say prove Iraq is resuming banned nuclear activity at Tuwaitha. Officials at the site also showed medicines and samples of what they said was pharmaceutical and environment research going on here.

Iraq's Foreign Ministry adviser said he hoped opening it up to international media would dispel the -- quote -- "evil aim to target Iraq."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How optimistic are you that you're going to be successful in this?

AL-MAOUSAW: Well, diplomats are not optimistic and pessimistic, we know that.

MARTONE: James Martone, CNN, Tuwaitha, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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