Excerpts from the Israeli newspaper Ha´aretz. It´s a
News article published in its Internet edition, August 2nd, 2000.
Underlines have been added by Radio Islam, and "[...]"
indicates passages deleted from the original text:
Neighbors
Going through the motions of sanctioning Iraq
By Zvi
Bar'el
This Saturday, a surprising visitor arrived in Baghdad. Scott
Ritter, the most famous supervisor in the UN monitoring team
investigating Iraq's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, arrived,
this time equipped with a movie camera. Ritter plans to film a
documentary in Iraq about nuclear, chemical and biological sites and
the huge damage the sanctions have caused Iraqi citizens. An Iraqi
businessman, Shaker Alhafaji, who now lives abroad, is financing the
film production and has already opened a bank account for it with
$400,000. He will also accompany Ritter throughout the entire
filming. In an interview with the Washington Post, Ritter said he
plans to show the dark side of the war and attempt to rid Iraq of
its title of "the bad guy" of the Middle East. Today is the tenth
anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Many of those involved
in the invasion and in the Gulf War, which started around six months
later, have switched careers, left their jobs, published books, moved
to research institutes or died. Saddam Hussein is still in the same
place. He continues to run Iraq and the relationship between him and
the world seems as if it is as it has always been. Occasionally,
television stations feature brief reports on life in Iraq; but the
international press has almost totally lost interest in what is
happening in Iraq and news coverage in the Arab countries focuses
primarily on the political aspect and Iraq's attempts to obtain the
help of Arab countries in its struggle to have the sanctions lifted.
A UN report does indeed indicate that since the war, the infant
mortality rate in Iraq has doubled, and Iraq reports that over a
million and a quarter people have died of illness and starvation as a
result of the sanctions, but these reports do not impress the
decision makers. The sanctions which were originally intended to
pressure Saddam to change his policy and later fed the illusion that
through them it would be possible to spark public pressure in Iraq
that would bring down the regime, have over the years become a tool
of revenge and symbol of unfulfilled political aspirations.
Operation 'Cup of Tea'
Ritter's appearance in Baghdad, perhaps more than anything
else, symbolizes the uselessness of the anti-Iraq policy. Ritter
became famous when he loudly resigned from his post as a supervisor
because he felt the UN and the United States were not determined
enough and might therefore cause Saddam to resume development of his
non-conventional weapons. In a series of interviews and lectures that
he began immediately after his resignation, Ritter related that
decisions and orders that he received from his overseers expressed
weakness, loss of direction and almost a lack of desire to actually
achieve the goals of the UN monitoring.
He disclosed the huge obstacles that Saddam's officials and
soldiers placed in front of the UN monitoring team. Ritter demanded
more forceful supervision and was one of the most creative minds
trying to get around Saddam's obstruction techniques. At the same
time, he also revealed the link between the UN supervisors and
American intelligence and accused his superior, the head of the
observer delegation, Richard Butler, of installing monitoring devices
meant to relay information about what was happening at the sites
directly to American intelligence. Butler vehemently denied the
existence of any such link.
The CIA was not alone in its contacts with the delegation of UN
supervisors. According to Ritter's statements in an interview
with the New Yorker, Israel took upon itself the task of analyzing
aerial photos taken by an American spy satellite that was used by the
UN delegation. Later on, Ritter wrote that "I started asking (the
Israelis) more specific questions and they put me in touch with their
analysts. Now it was no longer just a matter of analyzing photos. I
was receiving access to the Israeli intelligence community." A
bulletin of nuclear science reported that Israel had in effect set up
a cooperation unit, referred to as "the green headquarters," headed
by Yaakov Amidror, which worked across from the headquarters of the
UN supervisory delegation in New York. These offices, Ritter's
remarks indicate, planned several operations together, including the
last operation in Romania, known as Operation Cup of Tea, which was
meant to prevent the acquisition of components in Romania.
Ritter was unable to obtain hard evidence that could prove the UN
delegation's claim that Iraq was continuing its illegal activities to
develop long-range missiles. The reason is apparently that Israel
refused to divulge some of the information in order not to harm its
sources and reveal its methods of operation. At a certain point,
Ritter was suspected of relaying confidential American information
to Israel and CIA investigators were even on the verge of charging
him with spying for Israel. Ritter relates that he felt that the
head of the CIA's Middle East desk started treating him as a
competitor because of his close ties with Israel.
This week, prior to his arrival in Iraq, Ritter said that Butler's
attacks on Iraq and his charges that it was supposedly developing new
weapons systems were unfounded. Iraq, Ritter stated, does
not have the ability to develop such weapons in its current
circumstances. The film he is about to produce is meant to prove
these claims.
[...]
However, in the last two years, it turns out that the sanctions
have not been doing their job. Since the supervision stopped
unofficially, when Saddam did not allow supervisors to do their jobs,
and since they left Iraq over a year and a half ago, there has in
effect been no supervision of suspected sites in Iraq and there are
no findings to prove or disprove the existence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. Richard Butler, who visited Israel three
weeks ago, did, however, determine that Iraq is developing
long-range missiles, but he could not present any proof of this.
Scott Ritter, in contrast to Butler, several days ago said that
Butler was exaggerating in his remarks about Iraqi capabilities.
Ritter now suggests that instead of checking the past and Iraq's
inventory of weapons, it would be better to look into Iraq's future
capability and impose a supervisory system that will prevent future
development of weapons of mass destruction. Such a system, Ritter
believes, would lead to cooperation with Iraq and thereby bring about
an end to the era of sanctions that did not achieve their goal. In
essence, the current situation is that the sanctions are in effect
even though there is no supervision and at the moment, there is no
way of forcing Saddam to accept the supervision.
"Before the sanctions and the supervisory delegations, it was
possible to know more about what Iraq had," says an Israeli
intelligence official. "Today Iraq is a closed fortress, and most of
the statements about its military capability are based on
speculation. But it is tough to find any significant personality who
would want to lift the sanctions on Iraq. It seems to me that whoever
imposed them hasn't yet let go of the illusion that it will be
possible to get rid of Saddam with them."
[...]
