U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed doubts Tuesday that weapons inspectors in Iraq could find solid evidence that Saddam Hussein is building weapons of mass destruction.
"I can't quite picture how intrusive something would have to be," he said. Iraq allowed U.N. inspectors into the country to verify that it was not producing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons as a condition of the cease-fire agreement that ended the Gulf War in 1991. Saddam expelled the inspectors in 1998.
Rumsfeld stated he believed Iraq has used those years without international supervision to capitalize on dual-use technologies to develop a robust weapons program.
The U.N. inspectors in post-Gulf War Iraq typically only found information of importance when an Iraqi defector tipped the team off about where to look, Rumsfeld explained.
Such an effort would have to be enormously intrusive before any reasonable person would be confident to "find, locate and identify … Iraq's very aggressive weapons-of- mass-destruction program," he conveyed.
According to Rumsfeld, the world needs an inspection regime in Iraq that would provide reasonable confidence that Saddam Hussein is not trying to develop nuclear capability or to continue enhancing his other weapons of mass destruction, meaning biological and chemical weapons.
AGCC
Meanwhile, the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) has warned that any strike against Iraq will threaten the region's security and stability and add to the suffering of the Iraqi people.
"Any strike against Iraq will lead to nothing but more suffering of the Iraqi people and threaten the security and stability of the region," the council's newly-appointed Secretary-General Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiya said in Abu Dhabi Tuesday.
He said in his first public appearance since his appointment two weeks ago that Iraq also should act in a way that would avert any strike against it.
"Baghdad should fulfil what it promised at the Beirut Summit and should implement the Security Council resolutions to guarantee that it would not be attacked. It should act in a way that would not give others more excuses to do so. It should translate its words in Beirut into action," Mr Attiya said. (Albawaba.com)
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