The Hindu : Securing Baghdad, the priority: U.S.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 19, 2003

International

International

Securing Baghdad, the priority: U.S.

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington April 18. The Pentagon is making it known in quite clear terms that one of the main priorities in Iraq right now is firmly securing Baghdad and in finding weapons of mass destruction — not in looking for evidence whether the deposed Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, is alive or dead. Further the point is being made that giving anything conclusive on the whereabouts of Mr. Hussein could take several weeks given the magnitude of the task on hand.The White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, remarked in an On Line session that he believed the former Iraqi leader was dead. The Pentagon maintains that even if Mr. Card is correct in his assumption, proving this could take weeks. Investigative teams of the United States have gone through two sites which have seen massive American bombing on March 19 and April 7. But still tons of debris remained to be examined; and this work has to be done with the use of heavy equipment, it is said.

At a town hall type meeting at the Pentagon, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, argued that the higher priority of finding weapons of mass destruction would also take a long time and the key to this will be in the hands of Iraqis who know details of any weapons or programmes of weapons of mass destruction.

"I don't think we'll discover anything, myself'', Mr. Rumsfeld told employees of the Pentagon.

``I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you'll find something.''

One of the things that is attracting a lot of attention on the ground in Iraq and here is increasing concern that stockpiles of dangerous chemicals and biological materials such as VX, nerve gas agents and mustard gas should not slip out of the country or fall into unscrupulous hands. It is said that thousands of soldiers and experts are working in Iraq to locate these substances.

The Bush administration is coming under a lot of pressure and scrutiny on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — the rationale of the very existence is what this Iraq war was supposed to be.

Meanwhile the Bush administration is said to have enlisted the help of about 10 former Weapons Inspectors in the hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; but the work of these inspectors has got off to a slow start.

The identitities of the inspectors have not been revealed but they are believed to be mostly Americans with perhaps some British nationals.

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