Intelligence hotline to UN inspectors
Thu, December 19, 2002
Source: Ananova
Britain is helping the UN inspectors in Iraq with intelligence, but diplomats have complained the United States is holding back critical information.
British intelligence sets up hotline to UN arms inspectors
Whitehall officials have set up a channel to the UN monitors and are continuing to pass information. The US and Britain claim Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction - which Iraq vehemently denies. The inspectors want data from Washington and London to determine whether their claims are true.
The disclosure that Britain is helping the inspectors follows the Foreign Secretary's dismissal of Iraq's 12,000 page weapons dossier on Wednesday as an "obvious falsehood". Chief UN inspector Hans Blix "has made it clear many times that if we are to be effective, we do need timely information from member states that may possess it. Iraq is too big a country to go looking randomly," said his spokesman Ewen Buchanan. He would not be drawn on what countries are assisting the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, which Blix heads.
An unnamed British official in New York said London also has views, based on intelligence, that it wants to share with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is in charge of the nuclear inspections in Iraq. The United States has said repeatedly it has evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programmes, but it has yet to make any public.
But diplomatic sources said Washington has not provided any critical information that would lead UN inspectors to secret caches of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or material to make them - despite repeated requests from Blix. Instead, the Bush administration is trying to increase pressure on UN inspectors to seek interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists outside of Iraq to gain new intelligence, a prerogative given to them under Security Council Resolution 1441.
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