Iraq Under Fire: Saddam holds on to weapons technology

AS ALLIED bombers attacked Iraq again yesterday, President Saddam Hussein was unable to reach for his Scud missiles, the awe-inspiring but innacurate weapons he used to such effect during the Gulf war.

Despite a brief alarm triggered by an erroneous news agency report yesterday, Iraq has been unable to attack its enemies in Saudi Arabia and Israel with long-range ballistic missiles, because of the painstaking work of United Nations weapons demolition experts, who, for the past 22 months, have tracked down and destroyed every Iraqi missile with a range of more than 150km (90 miles).

But despite the UN's success in destroying Iraq's infamous Scuds, which has also kept the skies free of Patriot missiles, there are grave concerns that President Saddam is still holding on to the technology and know-how needed to rebuild his missile arsenal, once the West loses interest in containing him.

The UN's main concern continues to be Iraq's top secret Badr 2000 long-range missile programme, a missile being developed in co-operation with Egypt and Argentina which would have been capable of launching a nuclear warhead. The Badr 2000 has a range of 1,000km and Iraqi blueprints seized by the UN show that it was being designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Iraq has doggedly refused to help the UN discover who its outside suppliers of technology for the Badr project were, and to the UN's annoyance Cairo and Buenos Aires have also been unco-operative. The UN fears that as long as President Saddam is in power, and Iraqi scientists with expertise are to hand, he will be able to rebuild the missile programme.

Thus when allied warplanes destroyed the advanced engineering plant in the Baghdad suburb of Zaafaraniyah on Sunday it was finishing off a plant which was used to produce parts of Iraq's nuclear programme. Much of the plant's equipment was under the UN's atomic agency seal, but it was still capable of being reactivated to produce parts for nuclear and ballistic weapons, diplomats said yesterday. Iraq was also developing a three-stage rocket, called the Abid, capable of carrying satellites and re-entry vehicles.

The broad-based effort to rid Iraq of its weapons has seen the pooling of intelligence resources from the United States, Russia and other countries at the United Nations in a unique way. The UN weapons inspectors were able to track down and destroy Iraq's considerable inventory of missiles and launchers, a feat the allied bombers failed to accomplish during the war. A UN agency had never before been handed such top-grade intelligence material and its success in destroying Iraq's missiles, chemical weapons stockpiles and nuclear development facilities has proven the case for UN involvement in multilateral disarmament.

Drawn mostly from Western countries, the UN's experts have been combing through Iraq's most secret military sites since 1991. One of the first missile sites they visited was al-Taji military camp outside Baghdad in July 1991. There they found 62 Scud al-Hussein type missiles and six Soviet- made mobile launchers.

The missiles were crushed by bulldozers and the launchers cut up with blow torches. When the inspectors returned on a surprise visit they found 11 decoy Scud missiles and other equipment.

It was a pattern which was to be repeated over and over, especially as the inspectors got closer to Iraq's most closely guarded ballistic missile secrets. Iraq was especially keen not to reveal anything about the Badr 2000 missile.

The CIA claimed last year that Iraq was still hiding some 200 missiles, including the longer-range al-Husseini missiles, but this figure has been disputed by senior UN weapons inspectors. Although Iraq has tried to cheat at every stage of the weapons destruction programme, the UN believes it has accounted for most of the Scuds supplied to Iraq by the former Soviet Union. However, it may still be hiding Scud missiles acquired from North Korea. The UN has long had misgivings about Iraq's arithmetic concerning the number of Scuds it says it fired during the Iran-Iraq war and the number of Scuds it converted to longer-range al-Husseini missiles.

The best estimate that experts are now giving is that, despite American claims, all Iraq's missiles have been destroyed. The Scuds used in the Gulf war did not pose a significant threat to the allies, and few experts expect Iraq to hurl any missiles at Saudia Arabia and invite an even heavier response from the allies.