Monday, December 09, 2002

Rift between US and UNMOVIC over Iraq WMD
"The US and the UK... continue to insist they have 'solid evidence' that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction. It is an insistence that is exacerbating the already fraught relationship between the Bush administration and the UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. The past seven days have seen an increasingly tense series of exchanges with the chief inspector and the main cheerleaders among the Bush administration hawks who have heckled Blix and his team from the sidelines on an almost daily basis, insisting, not least, that he use his powers to remove Iraqi scientists and their families from the country for interview by US officials.

"By Friday that heckling had began to irritate Blix, who delivered a series of rebukes to the Washington hawks. 'We are not going to abduct anyone,' he said on Friday after meeting the Security Council. 'The UN is not a defection agency.' Blix's irritation has not been limited to the issue of defections. He has complained sharply too that if the US has evidence that Iraq retains weapons of mass destruction then it should share it with the UN's inspectors so that they can investigate."

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