Iraq holds back on missile destruction

IRAQ has withheld a decision on a United Nations order to start destroying its Al Samoud 2 missile programme by the end of the week, but said yesterday that it is “serious about solving this”.

Iraq’s chief liaison to UN weapons inspectors insisted Baghdad is “clean” of weapons of mass destruction and there should be no new UN resolution on disarming Saddam Hussein, as the United States demands.

At a packed news conference in Baghdad’s Information Ministry last night, Lieutenant General Hossam Mohamed Amin gave Iraq’s first official comment on an order by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix that it must dismantle its Al Samoud 2 missile programme.

Iraq’s response will likely be a key factor in determining how the UN Security Council votes on a resolution the US is expected to introduce early next week designed to win approval for an attack on Iraq.

“We are serious about solving this,” Amin told journalists. He said the order was being studied, “and we hope it will be resolved peacefully, without the interference of others, particularly the Americans.” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he didn’t expect Baghdad to resist the order.

“If they refuse to destroy the weapons, the Security Council will have to make a decision,” Annan told reporters last night in Turkey. “I don’t see why they would not destroy them.”

President Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, was defiant about the US threat of war.

“Americans can harm and destroy buildings and installations, but will never be able to humiliate Iraq,” he was quoted as saying by the official Iraqi News Agency. “The people of Iraq are not defending only Iraq, but the whole Arab nation and its security.”

Saddam yesterday met with former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, and the news agency said the Iraqi president praised Clark for his role in the anti-war movement in the United States. It gave few other details.

Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was also in Baghdad yesterday, but his activities, his very presence, were not officially confirmed. Primakov, who forged close ties with Baghdad as a former Soviet minister, has mediated in Iraq on several occasions. However, his mission to Baghdad in a bid to prevent the 1991 Gulf War ended in failure.

Amin said destroying the missile programme would be a blow to Iraq’s defences, but not a serious blow.

It “would affect our fighting capabilities, but it would not finish them or affect them greatly,” he said. “This missile represents only one aspect of our defensive capabilities. We have comprehensive capabilities.”

Blix ordered the missiles destroyed under UN supervision starting on Saturday. Some of the Al Samoud 2 missiles have tested at more than the 93-mile range limit set by UN resolutions adopted at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq says they flew beyond the limit because they were not weighed down by guidance and other systems.

Blix said Iraq had increased the diameter of the Al Samoud in violation of a 1994 order from the previous UN inspectors, and computer simulations showed the missile exceeded the limit. A larger diameter means the missile has the potential to travel farther.