- The United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages
of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised
version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security
council.
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- The full extent of Washington's complete control over
who sees what in the crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the allegations
made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions' in the document
constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN resolution on Iraq.
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- Last week, Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan accepted
that it was 'unfortunate' that his organisation had allowed the US to take
the only complete dossier and edit it. He admitted 'the approach and style
were wrong' and Norway, a member of the security council, says it is being
treated like a 'second-class country'.
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- Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a 'catalogue
of recycled information and flagrant omissions', the non-permanent members
of the security council will have no way of testing the US claims for themselves.
This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back to the security council
seeking explicit authorisation for war on Iraq if breaches of resolution
1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors -- this weekend investigating
10 sites in Iraq, including an oil refinery south of Baghdad -- deliver
their report to the UN next month.
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- A UN source in New York said: 'The questions being asked
are valid. What did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed
to be checking against the dossier's content, how can any future claim
be verified. In effect the US is saying trust us, and there are many who
just will not.'
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- Current and former UN diplomats are said to be livid
at what some have called the 'theft' of the Iraqi document by the US. Hans
von Sponeck, the former assistant general secretary of the UN and the UN's
humanitarian co- ordinator in Iraq until 2000, said: 'This is an outrageous
attempt by the US to mislead.'
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- Although the five permanent members of the security council
-- the US, the UK, France, China and Russia -- have had access to the complete
version, there was agreement that the US be allowed to edit the dossier
on the ground that its contents were 'risky' in terms of security on weapons
proliferation.
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- Yesterday, US President George W Bush announced that
a planned trip to several African countries, scheduled for January, had
been cancelled. As he gave the go-ahead to double the current 50,000 US
troops deployed in the Gulf by early January, he used his weekly radio
address to say that 'the men and women in the [US] military, many of whom
will spend Christmas at posts and bases far from home' were the only thing
that stood between 'Americans and grave danger'.
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- An equally pessimistic view of the immediate future came
from the Vatican. Pope John Paul II promised the Catholic church would
not cease to have its voice heard and would offer prayers 'in the face
of this horizon bathed in blood'.
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- Despite the prayers, the US military isn't expecting
peace. Yesterday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs
of staff, was asked if US forces were ready if called upon immediately.
General Myers simply said: 'You bet.'
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- The language coming from Baghdad was equally gung ho.
The Iraqi newspaper Babel, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, likened
US and UK political leaders to ruthless Mongol conquerors of the past.
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- http://www.sundayherald.com/30195
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