| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq Says Zarqawi Likely Seeking WMD Materials |
| 2004-07-11 |
| By Edmund Blair Sunday, July 11th, 2004 BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq’s national security adviser said Sunday unconventional weapons material might have gone to neighboring states in the war and Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is probably trying to get some. Mowaffaq al-Rubaie also said the Iraqi interim government had approved the transfer of all radioactive material in its possession to the United States, but said he could not be sure more material was not hidden inside Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Rubaie did not provide any evidence that unconventional weapons materials had crossed the border, or of attempts by militants to acquire them in Iraq. U.S. and U.N. officials said Wednesday Washington had transported about 1.8 tonnes of enriched uranium out of Iraq for safekeeping more than a year after looters stole it from a U.N.-sealed facility left unguarded by U.S. troops. Artillery shells found by Polish troops in Iraq in June contained the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin, the Polish army said last week. "Just imagine if these weapons of mass destruction or any of these capabilities of making a dirty bomb or a chemical weapon or anything like this, if it falls in the hands of Zarqawi’s gangsters and Zarqawi’s people and these global terrorists or Saddam’s former regime, what will happen?" he said. "I have no shadow of doubt that..., with his evil mind, he (Zarqawi) will try to acquire these unconventional weapons," he told a news conference. Zarqawi is Washington’s top militant target in Iraq and has offered a $25 million reward for his capture. Zarqawi’s group has claimed responsibility for bombings in Iraq and the beheadings of an American and South Korean. MISTAKES Asked if unconventional weapons material may already be in the hands of Zarqawi or others like him, Rubaie said: "We don’t know. We have no intelligence information on that." But he said "many mistakes" were made in failing to secure sensitive sites after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam. Continued ... (in link) |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |