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American Morning

Iraq: The Weapons Hunt: India Link

Aired February 05, 2003 - 08:38   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: So could this case provide smoking gun evidence that Saddam Hussein is indeed developing weapons of mass destruction?
Joining us from Washington now to react to this story, Kenneth Pollack, CNN analyst and director of the Saban Center for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institute.

Welcome back, Kenneth.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: How important is this story, and what does it mean?

POLLACK: It's important, especially the fact that it's coming at the same time that you have Colin Powell going to the U.N. to make the case. You don't want to overemphasize it. This is only one in a pattern, and really what's going on here is demonstrating that the Iraqis continue to procure prohibited items.

ZAHN: The simple fact of the matter is that even if this isn't being used for nefarious purposed, and I think it's going to be hard for the Iraqis to claim that it didn't. It's still a violation of the sanctions. So the Iraqis saying that this isn't a violation of any resolution is blatantly false.

But I think that the evidence is pretty clear that this is part of an Iraqi illegal procurement network.

ZAHN: What does it tell us about how Saddam gets his supplies?

POLLACK: Well, it is a very good sense of what Saddam does, in terms of going to companies out there, making a very good deal, sweetheart deals to basically provide him with things outside of the U.N. system and below boards, make sure that no one knows exactly what's going on. Had it not been for the Indian government stumbling on this and actually being willing to prosecute the case, this wouldn't have seen the light of the day either. And in the 1990s, we saw constant evidence of this. There were lots of countries who were willing to make these kinds of deals with the Iraqis, because the Iraqis were willing to pay lots of money.

What's really unusual about this case is you have a government that was willing to do something about it.

ZAHN: The court documents also allege that any sea ship's specialized supplies, like atomized aluminum power and titanium centrifical pumps, do those have duel usages?

POLLACK: My understanding is that they do. Again, there is a variety of possibilities there, but what I understand is that they do have uses of both chemical and missile programs, and it is more evidence that the Iraqis have a very active procurement network, that the Iraqis have been right from the get-go, from the very start, right after the Gulf War, up to the present, been looking to try to keep their weapons of mass destruction programs going, and they are looking all across the world to do it, and you saw that map of how they do things. They reach out to a country like India, they trans-ship the stuff the stuff to the United Arab Emirates, then it gets trans- shipped to Jordan, and only then does it go to Iraq.

So you have multiple false end user's certificate so that nobody really knows where the stuff is going to, and then they bribe officials in Jordan or make sweetheart deals with other nations to get the stuff through the Iraqi border.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate you joining us in this hour. I know, Ken, you'll be back in the next hour to talk more about Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N.

See you in a bit.

POLLACK: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.

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 February 5, 2003 - 08:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: So could this case provide smoking gun evidence that Saddam Hussein is indeed developing weapons of mass destruction?
Joining us from Washington now to react to this story, Kenneth Pollack, CNN analyst and director of the Saban Center for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institute.

Welcome back, Kenneth.

KENNETH POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: How important is this story, and what does it mean?

POLLACK: It's important, especially the fact that it's coming at the same time that you have Colin Powell going to the U.N. to make the case. You don't want to overemphasize it. This is only one in a pattern, and really what's going on here is demonstrating that the Iraqis continue to procure prohibited items.

ZAHN: The simple fact of the matter is that even if this isn't being used for nefarious purposed, and I think it's going to be hard for the Iraqis to claim that it didn't. It's still a violation of the sanctions. So the Iraqis saying that this isn't a violation of any resolution is blatantly false.

But I think that the evidence is pretty clear that this is part of an Iraqi illegal procurement network.

ZAHN: What does it tell us about how Saddam gets his supplies?

POLLACK: Well, it is a very good sense of what Saddam does, in terms of going to companies out there, making a very good deal, sweetheart deals to basically provide him with things outside of the U.N. system and below boards, make sure that no one knows exactly what's going on. Had it not been for the Indian government stumbling on this and actually being willing to prosecute the case, this wouldn't have seen the light of the day either. And in the 1990s, we saw constant evidence of this. There were lots of countries who were willing to make these kinds of deals with the Iraqis, because the Iraqis were willing to pay lots of money.

What's really unusual about this case is you have a government that was willing to do something about it.

ZAHN: The court documents also allege that any sea ship's specialized supplies, like atomized aluminum power and titanium centrifical pumps, do those have duel usages?

POLLACK: My understanding is that they do. Again, there is a variety of possibilities there, but what I understand is that they do have uses of both chemical and missile programs, and it is more evidence that the Iraqis have a very active procurement network, that the Iraqis have been right from the get-go, from the very start, right after the Gulf War, up to the present, been looking to try to keep their weapons of mass destruction programs going, and they are looking all across the world to do it, and you saw that map of how they do things. They reach out to a country like India, they trans-ship the stuff the stuff to the United Arab Emirates, then it gets trans- shipped to Jordan, and only then does it go to Iraq.

So you have multiple false end user's certificate so that nobody really knows where the stuff is going to, and then they bribe officials in Jordan or make sweetheart deals with other nations to get the stuff through the Iraqi border.

ZAHN: Well, we appreciate you joining us in this hour. I know, Ken, you'll be back in the next hour to talk more about Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N.

See you in a bit.

POLLACK: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.

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