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American Morning
Latest on Hunt for Weapons in Iraq
Aired December 11, 2002 - 06:23 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And now on to the hunt for weapons in Iraq. We could soon get at least a primarily idea of what's contained in Iraq's 11,000 page declaration. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix says the main part, about 3,000 pages, will be analyzed by Friday. He says right now his people are removing some portions of the report that could help other nations build and distribute weapons of mass destruction.
The "Washington Times" is reporting the CIA might rush a preliminary report to the White House as soon as today.
Let's head now to Baghdad, where our Rym Brahimi has more on U.N. weapons inspections now, for the third week -- good morning, Rym.
RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
Well, the inspections have been able now to be more wide, more broad, to go about it at a faster pace and also to intensify really their work. Now, this is for many reasons. One, they've been able to broaden their work because of new arrivals. As you know, Carol, there were reinforcements that arrived for the inspectors in the past couple of days. They're now up to 70 inspectors and that allows them to do what they did yesterday.
Yesterday, Carol, there were six teams that went out to different sites. And they were even able to go out as far as a five hour drive away from Baghdad and spend the night there. That's a site that was, used to be a uranium purifying plant that now we're told by the director of the facility only produces fertilizers from phosphates.
But nonetheless, that means that they're able to do much, much more work, go farther away from Baghdad and do more in depth work, maybe, since they're able to spend more time there.
The other reason, Carol, is because of that famous full, final and complete declaration. It seems they've already begun to analyze it very quickly in New York because one of the factories that was visited this morning was actually one of the factories cited in that declaration. It's a factory that was only built in '99. Our senior correspondent Nic Robertson was there. He'll be telling you more about that later.
But he told us that basically there were still parts of it that were being constructed and the director told them, confirmed to them that this was something that was listed in the new declaration. It's something that was making, it was involved, Carol, in making parts of missiles and other military equipment. So now we're moving to another step in the inspections and probably a more faster pace and more intense phase of the inspections -- Carol.
COSTELLO: We'll be following it all.
Rym Brahimi live from Baghdad this morning.
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 December 11, 2002 - 06:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And now on to the hunt for weapons in Iraq. We could soon get at least a primarily idea of what's contained in Iraq's 11,000 page declaration. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix says the main part, about 3,000 pages, will be analyzed by Friday. He says right now his people are removing some portions of the report that could help other nations build and distribute weapons of mass destruction.
The "Washington Times" is reporting the CIA might rush a preliminary report to the White House as soon as today.
Let's head now to Baghdad, where our Rym Brahimi has more on U.N. weapons inspections now, for the third week -- good morning, Rym.
RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
Well, the inspections have been able now to be more wide, more broad, to go about it at a faster pace and also to intensify really their work. Now, this is for many reasons. One, they've been able to broaden their work because of new arrivals. As you know, Carol, there were reinforcements that arrived for the inspectors in the past couple of days. They're now up to 70 inspectors and that allows them to do what they did yesterday.
Yesterday, Carol, there were six teams that went out to different sites. And they were even able to go out as far as a five hour drive away from Baghdad and spend the night there. That's a site that was, used to be a uranium purifying plant that now we're told by the director of the facility only produces fertilizers from phosphates.
But nonetheless, that means that they're able to do much, much more work, go farther away from Baghdad and do more in depth work, maybe, since they're able to spend more time there.
The other reason, Carol, is because of that famous full, final and complete declaration. It seems they've already begun to analyze it very quickly in New York because one of the factories that was visited this morning was actually one of the factories cited in that declaration. It's a factory that was only built in '99. Our senior correspondent Nic Robertson was there. He'll be telling you more about that later.
But he told us that basically there were still parts of it that were being constructed and the director told them, confirmed to them that this was something that was listed in the new declaration. It's something that was making, it was involved, Carol, in making parts of missiles and other military equipment. So now we're moving to another step in the inspections and probably a more faster pace and more intense phase of the inspections -- Carol.
COSTELLO: We'll be following it all.
Rym Brahimi live from Baghdad this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
