[PEN-L:32853] White House Demands Weapons Inspectors Abduct Iraqi Scientists

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   New York Times  6 December 2002

U.S. Is Pressuring Inspectors in Iraq to Aid Defections

By PATRICK E. TYLER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - The Bush administration has stepped up pressure
on Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspection team to
identify key Iraqi weapons scientists and spirit them out of Iraq so
they can be offered asylum in exchange for disclosing where Saddam
Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction, according to
administration and United Nations officials.

High-level negotiations on the issue became visible when Condoleezza
Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, met with Mr. Blix
in New York on Monday and pressed the issue of interviewing Iraqi
scientists. The administration is offering to set up a witness
protection program for defecting Iraqi scientists, thus enabling a
more aggressive approach.

A United States official at the United Nations said that the talks on
how to handle Iraqi scientists were continuing and that the initial
message to Mr. Blix, a chief arms inspector, was that Washington
wanted him to "make it a priority" to use the full powers conveyed by
the Security Council resolution passed on Nov. 8.

The resolution demands that Iraq provide "unimpeded" and
"unrestricted" access "to all officials and other persons" that
inspectors decide they want to interview "inside or outside Iraq."...

An intense argument is under way, however, on almost all of the
details of a protection program. Some American officials want the
United Nations team to be aggressive in identifying scientists and
demanding that they leave the country, perhaps without the
scientists' permission. Mr. Blix is said to be arguing that the
United Nations cannot, in effect, abduct people against their will.
His view is being backed by most of the United Nations hierarchy and
the State Department in Washington, officials said....

United Nations officials, uneasy with soliciting or demanding
defections, have been searching for a means to conduct private
interviews with Iraqi scientists inside the country. American
officials have asserted that this is out of the question since the
inspection teams are under intense surveillance by Iraqi
intelligence. The officials said they were aware of a large number of
scientists who have knowledge of Iraqi weapons programs. Some would
like to see Mr. Blix submit a list of names to the Iraqi government
and demand to interview those individuals.

Still, Mr. Blix is said to be resisting any idea that the United
Nations can force Iraqi scientists to take the life-threatening step
of leaving Iraq for interrogation.

"That's where the problem is," said an administration official
sympathetic to the concerns Mr. Blix and other United Nations
officials have expressed. "Taking someone against their will is
contrary to the whole United Nations concept. You'd fracture the U.N.
consensus."...

<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/middleeast/06INSP.html>
*****

*****   White House demands weapons inspectors abduct Iraqi scientists

By Bill Vann and Barry Grey
7 December 2002

The Bush administration is pressuring UN weapons inspectors to kidnap
Iraqi scientists, spirit them out of the country and hand them over
to US intelligence for interrogation. This latest scheme to concoct a
pretext for war -- in defiance of every tenant of international law
and democratic rights -- is a devastating self-exposure of the war
camarilla in Washington.

According to administration officials, the scientists, together with
their families, would be taken from Iraq -- if necessary, against
their will -- and placed in a "witness protection program." Thus the
UN, at the bidding of Washington, would treat Iraqi civilians as
criminals.

This proposal -- worthy of Mafia gangsters -- should be taken by
world public opinion as an indication of the type of "democracy" the
US intends to establish, at the point of a bayonet, should it succeed
in invading and occupying the country.

In a meeting in New York on December 2, Bush's national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice, reportedly prodded chief UN weapons
inspector Hans Blix to push ahead with the plan to abduct scientists.
"Some American officials want the UN team to be aggressive in
identifying scientists and demanding that they leave the country,
perhaps without their permission," the New York Times reported
Friday. "Mr. Blix is said to be arguing that the UN cannot, in
effect, abduct people against their will."

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on Friday dodged a question
about whether the US was advocating the abduction of Iraqi
scientists. "I can't speak to all scenarios," he said. "Obviously, if
somebody is willing to leave the country, it's a much easier matter."
Fleischer's evasive reply stopped well short of a denial.

For his part, Blix angrily rejected the US proposal, declaring
Friday: "We are not going to abduct anybody and the UN is not going
to run a defection agency."...

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/iraq-d07.shtml>   *****

--
Yoshie

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