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Suspicious Movements at Plant Near Baghdad

Aired August 14, 2002 - 14:17   ET

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

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: There's word today of suspicious movements at a plant near Baghdad that Saddam Hussein claims is used to process meat.
The U.S. suspects it's a biological-weapons factory, and CNN's Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon with more on that -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, U.S. spy satellites in the last several days have observed a convoy of Iraqi trucks, vehicles, moving into what they believe, what the U.S. believes, is a suspected Iraqi biological weapon's facility.

Now all of this has taken place in town called Taji. This is northwest of Baghdad. The Iraqis have claimed this is nothing more than a meat processing plant, but the U.S. is concerned about this convoy of trucks moving into the facility. This facility was bombed by the U.S. more than a decade ago during Operation Desert Storm. The Iraqis rebuilt it. It was visited by weapon's inspector, and there's been a lot of concerns since then what the Iraqis may be up to at this facility.

Officials emphasize they don't know at this point, of course, what was in those trucks that moved into the plant recently.

But this is the latest in the series of concerns about what the Iraqis may be up to at the moment.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently confirmed that the Iraqis do have mobile biological weapon's facilities. In other words, this capability to produce bioweapons on trucks and vehicles that move up and down highways, almost impossible for the U.S. to readily target.

In addition, U.S. intelligence has noticed in recent days the Iraqis have now moved dozens of surface-to-air missiles around into new positions in central Iraq, not in the no-fly zones around Baghdad and other key areas. The U.S. assessment is they're doing this to avoid possible targeting by U.S. precision weapons in what they perceive may be a coming U.S. air attack. Officials here tell us, however, there are no such imminent plans -- Carol.

LIN: Barbara, you've also working on another plan about the missing U.S. Air Force pilot in Iraq, Scott Speicher, that the Pentagon might be thinking of changing his status.

STARR: We have learned today that indeed that's right, the Pentagon is thinking about changing the status of Scott Speicher from missing in action to missing-captured. This would be quite an extraordinary move. There is no evidence at this point that Scott Speicher is alive. But they do believe that the Iraqis know what happened to this Navy pilot when he was shot down over Iraq over a decade ago in the opening hours of operation Desert Storm. They believe the Iraqis have never come clean. They know what happened to Speicher.

This is part of a political move, we are told, to turn up the heat on Saddam Hussein, make him tell the United States what did happen to this man.

LIN: All right, thank you very much. Barbara Starr, live at the Pentagon.

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