Weapons teams scour Iraq

Secret units in desperate hunt for banned arsenal

Nicholas Watt, Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday April 12, 2003
The Guardian

Britain and the United States have bypassed the United Nations to establish a secret team of inspectors to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

It is a sign of the desperation in London and Washington to find a "smoking gun" to justify the war that the Anglo-American team has already conducted three inspections in the past two weeks.

No banned weapons have so far been found.

The decision to set up a new group of inspectors, dubbed US-movic because they are an American-led rival to Unmovic, will infuriate the UN.

Kofi Annan, the secretary general, pointedly reminded Britain and the US this week that Unmovic still has a mandate to carry out inspections.

Last night the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, added his criticism by saying that war against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the first shot was fired.

In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.

Mr Blix told the Spanish daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the [weapons] inspections."

He said Iraq was paying "a very high price _ in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections.

The role played by the new inspectors, who set up a base in Kuwait a week before the war began, was disclosed to the Guardian by David Kay, the former head of Unscom, the arms inspections team which left Iraq in 1998 after Iraq accused it of being infiltrated by spies.

No mention has been made of the new group by ministers or military spokesmen, who have indicated that weapons inspections are carried out by military forces. But the group, headed by Charles Duelfer, a former deputy head of the Unscom weapons inspectors, has travelled extensively in Iraq.

It is understood that Mr Duelfer's team was called in to inspect weapons and papers found at an airbase in Iraq's western desert two weeks ago. In the past week it has made two separate visits to sites on the road between Kuwait and Baghdad.

US and British special forces are also engaged in fierce exchanges in largely unnoticed fighting in Qaim, a strategic town on the border with Syria.

British defence officials were unusually coy last night about the fighting, which involved units of Iraq's Special Republican Guard, according to senior US military sources.

One explanation is that Iraqi forces are trying to protect either material which could be used for chemical or biological weapons or evidence of Iraq's attempts to develop a nuclear bomb. Another is that they are defending senior members of the regime trying to escape to Syria.

The failure to find any weapons of mass destruction after three weeks of war has raised questions about the casus belli. But British intelligence officials said it might be months before evidence was uncovered.

A cabinet minister has told the Guardian that Saddam Hussein's failure to use chemical weapons was not an indication of their absence. They had been dismantled and their contents hidden around the country.

"The regime has not had time to reassemble the things," a British official said.

"You will not find a factory of gleaming missiles," a source said. "They would have been broken down ages ago."

Mr Kay described the new inspectors as a "robust group of people". "There are special forces teams that carry out [immediate] inspections. But they are not as technically based as the Kuwait team, who are heavily science-based civilians."

A spokesman for Mr Blix, Ewen Buchanan, said the US-led team had tried and failed to recruit some of his staff.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said the existence of the secret team would lead to a major dispute. "You are more likely to find what you want if you do it yourself," he said. "If this team finds a smoking gun, people will not believe it."

The disclosure is likely to embarrass British ministers, who are officially committed to allowing Unmovic a role.

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, would only say yesterday that Britain and the US had set up a "machinery" for resuming inspections. "It may take some time," he added.

The US-Kurdish advance in the north meanwhile brought the front to within 60 miles of Tikrit, where some of Saddam's backers were believed to be taking refuge. Coalition aircraft have been striking Republican Guard positions in the area, and roadblocks have been erected to prevent Iraqi leaders from reaching the city to stage a last stand.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003