US hijacks dossier, may give gadgets to inspectors

After an intense lobbying campaign, the US received an early and uncut copy of Iraq’s weapons declaration and whisked it to Washington ...

After an intense lobbying campaign, the US received an early and uncut copy of Iraq’s weapons declaration and whisked it to Washington for analysis, diplomats and US officials said on Monday.

‘‘It’s already in Washington,’’ a Bush administration official said. US still has the lone copy of the report and will make duplicates for distribution to the other four permanent UN Security Council members, Britain, France, Russia and China, Russian envoy Gennady Gatilov said.

Iraq came close to
nuclear bomb: Official

Baghdad: An Iraqi official indicated on Sunday that Baghdad might have come close to developing a nuclear bomb. Amir al-Saadi, an adviser of President Saddam Hussein, said in Baghdad that Iraq had handed over all documentation on its nuclear programme to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this weekend as part of the arms declaration mandated by the UN Security Council.

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Asked how close Iraq had come to making a nuclear bomb, Saadi said: ‘‘We have the complete documentation from design to all the other things. We haven’t reached the final Assembly of a bomb nor tested it. ‘‘So if you are to follow that, there is no guarantee that you would succeed. It is for others to judge, it is for the IAEA to judge how close we were,’’ Saadi said. — Reuters

Diplomats said this was done because Washington had the best photocopying capabilities. The surprise decision to quickly turn over copies of the full report to the five permanent Security Council members overrode what the 15-member body had discussed on Friday.

At that time, the Council had decided to leave the report in the hands of UN arms inspectors until it was screened for possible nuclear secrets — a process expected to take days.

All five of permanent Council members are avowed nuclear powers. The 10 non-permanent members will see a purged version of the document once the arms inspectors have gone through the report and removed sensitive material, such as possible instructions on how to make a bomb.

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The Council changed its mind on distribution of the document late on Sunday after telephone conversations over the weekend among all members, chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix and Colombian Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso, the Security Council President for December, diplomats said.

‘‘The spirit of the conversation on Friday was to keep the material out of the hands of non-nuclear powers,’’ a council diplomat said.

Hours after the declaration arrived at the UN headquarters in New York, US said it will soon provide the UN inspectors with a list of priority sites it wants investigated immediately and has prepared a list of hi-tech surveillance gear for them in the hope of gaining information to back their claims of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destructions.

Sometime in the next two weeks, the US would provide chief weapons inspector Hans Blix with a list of priority sites it wants investigated immediately, a media report said today.

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First word on the documents’ content is likely to surface on Tuesday when Blix attends the monthly lunch of the 15 Security Council ambassadors and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Algerian-French artist’s work vandalised at Kochi art gallery over ‘obscenity’ allegations

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