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American Morning
Team of U.N. Inspectors Sets Down in Baghdad
Aired November 25, 2002 - 09:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: A team of U.N. inspectors landed in Baghdad. They're scheduled to start looking for weapons of mass destruction on Wednesday. Iraq already complaining that the process is just a setup for an eventual attack by the U.S.
We go live now to Baghdad, where we're joined by senior international correspondent Nic Robertson.
Good morning, Nic?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.
Well, that plane touching down less than 10 minutes ago, just as dusk is falling here. Different to when Hans Blix's plane came in last week, this plane touching down on a very remote runway on the airport.
Rym Brahimi says things are slightly different from Hans Blix's visit. The press' access is somewhat more limited, not able to get so close to the aircraft, which we are able to see already buses going out to pick those inspectors up, and also some trucks going out to that military transport aircraft to pick up equipment, presumably to bring into the U.N. offices here.
Now that team, because it's so late here, will go directly to the hotel, 12 of them missile, chemical biological experts, along with six nuclear experts. They'll start their work Wednesday. They'll have a day of preparation Tuesday. On Wednesday, they'll split into different teams and begin their work at the sites previous U.N. inspection teams left off at in 1998. They will check on the monitoring equipment such as cameras that was left at sites, such as dual-use sites. These are sites where it is believed Iraq could have been putting industrial equipment that is used for normal civilian industry, putting it to use in weapons of mass destruction.
So they'll begin with those sites. They say they are not ruling out the presidential sites. However, they do appear to starting with a softly approach. So getting a baseline, getting a handle, if you will, on what Iraq has been doing over the last four years -- Paula.
ZAHN: What are you told will be probably the biggest challenge they'll encounter the first couple of weeks on the ground?
ROBERTSON: Very likely it's going to be the sort of teething problems in their own mechanism. The guys in the advance team have had a week to put in their secure communications, so they will probably be figuring out how far the radio sets cover. Can they actually speak from the site that Iraq 30 miles north of Baghdad, back to their base here. The sort of teething problems are the vehicles that have been standing around for four years -- are they really road worthy? They look road worthy. They have got new registration plates on them, but are they going break down?
The real tests will come when they try to go to those contentious sites, and that's probably going to be sometime before Christmas.
The other tests, of course, is when Iraq makes that declaration by December 8th.
Iraq has to declare all of its weapons of mass destruction, and that letter from the Foreign Minister Naji Sabri (ph) to Kofi Annan, U.N. secretary-general, over the weekend, very angry, very specific, saying that he believes that this document, the foreign minister says, could be thousands of pages long, but if they make one mistake in it, he says he believes the United States could use that as a pretext for going to war. So maybe not plain sailing ahead here, Paula.
ZAHN: All right, Nic Robertson, thanks so much, appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 25, 2002 - 09:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: A team of U.N. inspectors landed in Baghdad. They're scheduled to start looking for weapons of mass destruction on Wednesday. Iraq already complaining that the process is just a setup for an eventual attack by the U.S.
We go live now to Baghdad, where we're joined by senior international correspondent Nic Robertson.
Good morning, Nic?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.
Well, that plane touching down less than 10 minutes ago, just as dusk is falling here. Different to when Hans Blix's plane came in last week, this plane touching down on a very remote runway on the airport.
Rym Brahimi says things are slightly different from Hans Blix's visit. The press' access is somewhat more limited, not able to get so close to the aircraft, which we are able to see already buses going out to pick those inspectors up, and also some trucks going out to that military transport aircraft to pick up equipment, presumably to bring into the U.N. offices here.
Now that team, because it's so late here, will go directly to the hotel, 12 of them missile, chemical biological experts, along with six nuclear experts. They'll start their work Wednesday. They'll have a day of preparation Tuesday. On Wednesday, they'll split into different teams and begin their work at the sites previous U.N. inspection teams left off at in 1998. They will check on the monitoring equipment such as cameras that was left at sites, such as dual-use sites. These are sites where it is believed Iraq could have been putting industrial equipment that is used for normal civilian industry, putting it to use in weapons of mass destruction.
So they'll begin with those sites. They say they are not ruling out the presidential sites. However, they do appear to starting with a softly approach. So getting a baseline, getting a handle, if you will, on what Iraq has been doing over the last four years -- Paula.
ZAHN: What are you told will be probably the biggest challenge they'll encounter the first couple of weeks on the ground?
ROBERTSON: Very likely it's going to be the sort of teething problems in their own mechanism. The guys in the advance team have had a week to put in their secure communications, so they will probably be figuring out how far the radio sets cover. Can they actually speak from the site that Iraq 30 miles north of Baghdad, back to their base here. The sort of teething problems are the vehicles that have been standing around for four years -- are they really road worthy? They look road worthy. They have got new registration plates on them, but are they going break down?
The real tests will come when they try to go to those contentious sites, and that's probably going to be sometime before Christmas.
The other tests, of course, is when Iraq makes that declaration by December 8th.
Iraq has to declare all of its weapons of mass destruction, and that letter from the Foreign Minister Naji Sabri (ph) to Kofi Annan, U.N. secretary-general, over the weekend, very angry, very specific, saying that he believes that this document, the foreign minister says, could be thousands of pages long, but if they make one mistake in it, he says he believes the United States could use that as a pretext for going to war. So maybe not plain sailing ahead here, Paula.
ZAHN: All right, Nic Robertson, thanks so much, appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
