Mr. Hamza (the author of this article), is a former director of Iraq's
nuclear-weapons program.

******************
The Inspections Dodge
Why are France and Germany pro-Saddam? Follow the money.

BY KHIDHIR HAMZA
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

My 20 years of work in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program and military industry
were partly a training course in methods of deception and camouflage to keep
the program secret. Given what I know about Saddam Hussein's commitment to
developing and using weapons of mass destruction, the following two points
are abundantly clear to me: First, the U.N. weapons inspectors will not find
anything Saddam does not want them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to
a degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq mainly because
they maintain lucrative trade deals with Baghdad, many of which are
arms-related.

Since the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 we have witnessed
a tiny team of inspectors with a supposedly stronger mandate begging Iraq to
disclose its weapons stockpiles and commence disarmament. The question that
nags me is: How can a team of 200 inspectors "disarm" Iraq when 6,000
inspectors could not do so in the previous seven years of inspection?

Put simply, surprise inspections no longer work. With the Iraqis' current
level of mobility and intelligence the whole point of inspecting sites is
moot. This was made perfectly clear by Colin Powell in his presentation
before the U.N. last week. But the inspectors, mindless of these changes,
are still visiting old sites and interviewing marginal scientists. I can
assure you, the core of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program has not even been
touched. Yesterday's news that Iraq will "accept" U-2 surveillance flights
is another sign that Saddam has confidence in his ability to hide what he's
got.

Meanwhile, the time U.N. inspectors could have used gathering intelligence
by interviewing scientists outside Iraq is running out. The problem is that
there is nothing Saddam can declare that will provide any level of assurance
of disarmament. If he delivers the 8,500 liters of anthrax that he now
admits to having, he will still not be in compliance because the growth
media he imported to grow it can produce 25,000 liters. Iraq must account
for the growth media and its products; it is doing neither.

Iraq's attempt to import aluminum tubes of higher tensile strength than is
needed in conventional weapons has been brushed aside by the IAEA's Mohammed
El-Baradei. He claims there is no proof that these tubes were intended for
modification and use in centrifuges to make enriched uranium. Yet he fails
to report that Iraq has the machining equipment to thin these tubes down to
the required thickness (less than one millimeter) for an efficient
centrifuge rotor. What's more, they don't find it suspect that Iraq did not
deliver all the computer controlled machining equipment that it imported
from the British-based, Iraqi-owned Matrix-Churchill that manufacture these
units.

Mr. Blix also discounted the discovery of a number of "empty"
chemical-weapons warheads. What he failed to mention is that empty is the
only way to store these weapon parts. The warheads in question were not
designed to store chemicals for long periods. They have a much higher
possibility of leakage and corrosion than conventional warheads. Separate
storage for the poisons is a standard practice in Iraq, since the Special
Security Organization that guards Saddam also controls the storage and
inventory of these chemicals.





What has become obvious is that the U.N. inspection process was designed to
delay any possible U.S. military action to disarm Iraq. Germany, France, and
Russia, states we called "friendly" when I was in Baghdad, are also engaged
in a strategy of delay and obstruction.
In the two decades before the Gulf War, I played a role in Iraq's efforts to
acquire major technologies from friendly states. In 1974, I headed an Iraqi
delegation to France to purchase a nuclear reactor. It was a 40-megawatt
research reactor that our sources in the IAEA told us should cost no more
than $50 million. But the French deal ended up costing Baghdad more than
$200 million. The French-controlled Habbania Resort project cost Baghdad a
whopping $750 million, and with the same huge profit margin. With these
kinds of deals coming their way, is it any surprise that the French are so
desperate to save Saddam's regime?

Germany was the hub of Iraq's military purchases in the 1980s. Our
commercial attaché, Ali Abdul Mutalib, was allocated billions of dollars to
spend each year on German military industry imports. These imports included
many proscribed technologies with the German government looking the other
way. In 1989, German engineer Karl Schaab sold us classified technology to
build and operate the centrifuges we needed for our uranium-enrichment
program. German authorities have since found Mr. Schaab guilty of selling
nuclear secrets, but because the technology was considered "dual use" he was
fined only $32,000 and given five years probation.

Meanwhile, other German firms have provided Iraq with the technology it
needs to make missile parts. Mr. Blix's recent finding that Iraq is trying
to enlarge the diameter of its missiles to a size capable of delivering
nuclear weapons would not be feasible without this technology transfer.

Russia has long been a major supplier of conventional armaments to Iraq--yet
again at exorbitant prices. Even the Kalashnikov rifles used by the Iraqi
forces are sold to Iraq at several times the price of comparable guns sold
by other suppliers.





Saddam's policy of squandering Iraq's resources by paying outrageous prices
to friendly states seems to be paying off. The irresponsibility and lack of
morality these states are displaying in trying to keep the world's worst
butcher in power is perhaps indicative of a new world order. It is a world
of winks and nods to emerging rogue states--for a price. It remains for the
U.S. and its allies to institute an opposing order in which no price is high
enough for dictators like Saddam to thrive.
Mr. Hamza, a former director of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program, is the
co-author of "Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi
Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda" (Scribner, 2000).






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