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CNN SHOWDOWN: IRAQ
Discussion with David Albright, Former U.N. Weapons Inspector
Aired December 10, 2002 - 12:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Joining me this hour with all the late-breaking developments are reporters covering this story. CNN's Michael Okwu. He's at the United Nations. Nic Robertson, he's in Baghdad. John King, he's over at the White House. At the U.N. today, the United States began to hand out copies to the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council of those nearly 12 thousands of pages of Iraqi documents on its weapons of mass destruction program.
Let's get the latest now from Michael Okwu. He's standing by at the U.N. -- Michael.
MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The documents are being looked at by experts in capitals all around the world, specifically those experts in the permanent five countries. Sources say that they are going to try to have something of substance to say within about two weeks. We also understand that they're working feverishly to try to get it done even before that.
And even as they try to work on this document, studying it, the United States in particular is deflecting blows from Baghdad. Specifically, the Iraqi government making claims that the U.S. has used unprecedented blackmail to obtain an original copy of the document. As a result, the deputy ambassador here at the United States saying we haven't blackmailed anybody. Less than 48 hours after the declaration was delivered at the United Nations, the Syrian ambassador not very happy.
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MIKHALE WEHBE, SYRIAN AMB. TO U.N.: It's unprecedented. It's unwise decision to be taken, because usually such decisions should be taken by consensus. Even if there is one state against this decision, they should not take the decision, either by consensus or to put it on vote.
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OKWU: In the meantime, a letter circulating among the members of the Security Council, essentially a table of contents of the document, breaks down the various areas of this document in the disciplines, nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistics missiles. The table of contents also indicating that there could be several mentions of suppliers to Iraq, both countries and individuals, and in particular, it mentions some programs that the Iraqi government may have been involved in, specifically making a reference to "terminated radiation bomb project," or what is commonly referred to as a dirty bomb. Officials here have known about this for quite some time, but it gives you a sense of what experts around the world are looking at right now, the Security Council meeting this afternoon with the secretary general, part of a regularly scheduled luncheon, where you can imagine some of the Security Council members will be trying to get a sense from Mr. Blix, who will be in attendance, as to how the translation process is going -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Michael Okwu at the U.N.
Michael, thanks very much. Let's go to Baghdad now, where the Iraqi government is accusing the United States of unprecedented blackmail, and attempted manipulation in connection with those documents.
Our Nic Robertson is standing by with that part of the story -- Nic.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, very sharp criticism of the United States coming from Iraq's foreign ministry today, as you say, accusing the United States for getting that unedited version of the Iraq's declaration, accusing them of historic blackmail at the U.N., saying it breaks the U.N.'s charter and mandate, saying specifically the reason Iraq believes the United States wanted to get access to its declaration was to manipulate it, possibly as a pretext for aggression against Iraq.
Despite this, however, there has been an increase in activity by U.N. weapons inspectors here. We've seen about another 25 weapons inspectors arrive here late on the day on a flight from Cyprus.
Also, according to U.N. briefers, late this afternoon, five different inspection teams went out today. They visited 10 sites today, a significant increase over what we've seen recently. One team traveling 5 1/2 hours across the Iraqi desert to Akashac (ph), a former uranium ore mining facility. That site bombed during the Gulf War in 1991, so far away from Baghdad that although the inspectors finish there today. They'll spend the night there. Also appearing on Iraqi Television this evening, something we haven't seen for a while.
President Saddam Hussein with his two sons, Uday Saddam Hussein and Kusay (ph) Saddam Hussein, meeting with the chairman of Iraq's military industrial commission. That is a military -- that is an industrial group that has a lot of dealings with the U.N. inspectors here, the inspectors go to a lot of their sites. The head of the commission saying his employees would be a thorn in the eye against all aggressors against Iraq.
President Saddam Hussein praising them for their efforts and urging them on to thwart any aggressive acts against Iraq -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Nic Robertson in Baghdad, thanks very much, Nic, for that report.
So how is the Bush administration reacting to this Iraqi accusation of unprecedented blackmail? For that, let's go to the White House and our senior White House correspondent John King, who has details -- John.
JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, White House officials dismissing that accusation out of hand, one calling it ludicrous, another saying, who did the Iraqi government believe this report was for? White House officials saying the United States is a permanent member of the Security Council, and it was President Bush who forced this issue at the United Nations, who won approval of that new resolution, getting the inspectors back in on the ground, and say the United States sought to obtain a full copy right away, because it had the technical expertise to make the copies available so quickly -- 12,000 pages, plus CD-ROMS -- to other permanent members of the Security Council. So U.S. officials say any charge of blackmail is simply ludicrous. They say the United States is doing just what it is supposed to do, reviewing the Iraqi document now page by page.
Intelligence analysts from several different agencies across the government, taking the lead in that task. The White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer telling us earlier today, President Bush is being briefed from time to time. I'm also told the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has received several preliminary briefings, but White House officials also saying they will not offer day-by-day assessments of what they think so far. They say they will wait until they can have a detailed analysis, and they say it could be several more days at least before they come to any significant conclusions -- Wolf.
BLITZER: John, just curious, the reason that the security council asked the U.S. to make the copies for the four other permanent members of the Security Council -- Russia, China, France and Britain -- was what, the U.N. didn't have that capability, and presumably, the United States government, presumably the CIA, had the copying equipment? Was it as simple as that, or is there something more to the story that I'm missing?
KING: There's more to it. The United States was very aggressive in demanding a copy of the full report. The initial decision at the Security Council was to wait a few days, let the inspectors see it first. The United States said it would not stand for that. It put significant pressure on the presidency of the Security Council, how held by Colombia, and said that it wanted the report right away, and that it would make those copies immediately, so that the other permanent members, five in total, including the United States, would have it at roughly the same time.
Obviously, the United States did have a bit of a head start, as it was the government that made the copies, but U.S. officials said they wanted to see what Iraq filed, and they said they also had specific concerns, as you have been discussing in recent days, whether there was any information in there about weapons proliferation, about building weapons of mass destruction that if disseminated publicly could help other nations that don't have that information, but might want it.
The United States said it had every right to see this, and officials do concede that they pushed very aggressively to get the Security Council to change its initial position and give it to the United States so the United States could make those copies and get it to all five permanent members -- Wolf.
BLITZER: John King at the White House, thanks very much, John.
let's get some analysis now of what all of this means, and for that, we bring in David Albright. He's a former U.N. weapons inspector, who's joining us live from our Washington bureau.
David, what do you make of this decision to let the United States make the copies and disseminate them among the five permanent members of the Security Council, which the Iraqis are now saying represents unprecedented blackmail?
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. ARMS INSPECTOR: Yes, I certainly don't agree with the Iraqis. The process of the turnover wasn't handled very well by the inspectors. INMOVAC (ph) people never should have made that judgment that they can decide what should be kept secret.
Finally, it's the nuclear weapons states who maintain robust guidelines and rules on what is secret and classified, and rightly they should be the ones looking at it first and making those kinds of decisions.
So I think it's good that the United States has a whole copy, it's good that the rest of the rest of the nuclear weapons states also have copies, and that the assessments can begin.
Meanwhile, the inspectors are assessing the documents, so I think we're at where we want to be, even though the road there was very choppy.
BLITZER: But you can understand why some countries who are members of the Security Council, like Syria, for example, are upset that they're not going to get the unedited version?
DAVID ALBRIGHT, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Yes, definitely. I mean, they expected to get it under the resolution, and they've got to be extremely unhappy. So I think that this wasn't thought through very well, and I think that we're seeing the result of that right now, and perhaps you could go right back and said the resolution should have never been written like it is, where all members of the Security Council get this declaration.
In the '90s, the permanent members of the Security Council always got the declarations, I mean, they got much more than that. That was the standard procedure. And so I think in a sense, we're going back to the old system.
BLITZER: What about these documents that were actually made available to CNN and other news organizations, the table of contents, the preface? You've had a chance to look through those specific pages. What have you learned about the Iraqi overall declaration based on those few pages that all of us have now seen? ALBRIGHT: Well, I can look more closely at the nuclear than at the others, but certainly what -- a concern that emerges is what we're talking about here is a set of declarations talking about the pre-1991 weapons of mass destruction programs that really is just a recycle from the '90s. I hope that's wrong. I hope the biological weapons declaration is much better than it was in the '90s. It was rejected out of hand by both the inspectors and I believe the Security Council as inadequate. And so I hope that's not what Iraq has resubmitted.
Part two appears to be a description of sites that are used for civil activities in the respective areas that could be misused for weapons of mass destruction. So you have nuclear sites that were -- many of which were part of the nuclear weapons program, that now have legitimate civil activities, but there doesn't seem to jump out of you anything that says, OK, here's a banned program that we had or have post-1991.
BLITZER: So I guess the biggest concern right now is if in fact the Iraqis say they've come clean, they've given the U.N. weapons inspectors everything, that the onus, the burden right now, is on the U.S. in particular to prove them wrong, if you will. Isn't that the next stage in all of this?
ALBRIGHT: I think in reality, the burden of proof has shifted. It was not intended to be this way, and I hope the that the United States and Britain do convey information to the inspectors, work closely with the inspectors, because finally, the most credible voice on determining whether Iraq is complying or not remains the U.N. inspectors, and I think if the United States makes the decision to go to the Security Council and lay out a case, it better have something like it had in the Cuban Missile Crisis if it's going to convince the world.
I think it will be much harder for the U.S. to make the case than it would be for the inspectors to make the case.
BLITZER: David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, helping us once again better understand this complicated story.
David, thanks very much for your expertise.
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