Word: baradei
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Long before David Kay took over in Iraq, before President Bush even gave the order to invade, teams of international weapons inspectors, led by Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei, spent months scouring Iraq for signs of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, or programs for producing them, and turned up nothing. In an interview a few months after the war, Blix commented pointedly, ‘’What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons. I don?...
...Still, the inspectors brought him in for another meeting the next day, but after al-Zahawie protested, they ended the discussion by taking a copy of his signature for further investigation. In a matter of weeks, IAEA chairman Mohammed El-Baradei told the UN Security Council that the letters supposedly detailing a Niger-Iraq uranium transaction had been forgeries...
...More troubling questions arise from the claim by IAEA chief Dr Mohammed el-Baradei, who was in charge of the nuclear component of the prewar UN inspection program in Iraq, that he was provided with the Niger "evidence" only in February, despite it having been shared on Capitol Hill the previous October. The U.S. and Britain were publicly committed to sharing intelligence with the UN inspectors in order to help them find a "smoking gun," yet el-Baradei was kept in the dark about evidence that was ostensibly directly relevant to his inquiry. And, of course, almost as soon...
...IAEA declined to comment. A senior State department official said he believed El Baradei was trying to resolve the issue behind the scenes before going public. But experts say the new discoveries are very serious and should be handled in public. "If Iran were found to have an operating centrifuge, it would be a direct violation [of the non-proliferation treaty] and is something that would need immediately to be referred to the United Nations Security Council for action," says Jon Wolfstahl of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes...
...wisdom and prudence of going to war, if the U.S. decides to invade they have considerable incentive to protect their interests by supporting the action. And the best political cover for making such a switch would be a negative report to the Council from Blix and Al-Baradei. Don't expect a war resolution to pass on Valentine's Day. But unless Saddam makes a dramatic turnabout in the next week, UN authorization for war may come within a matter of weeks of next Friday's report-back...