New U.N. Report on Iraqi Arms Called ‘Damning’

In a highly critical new report for the Security Council, United Nations arms inspectors will charge Iraq later this week with a series of major violations and obstructions that are almost certain to force the United States to demand new sanctions against Baghdad, U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials said Monday.

“The report has lots of damning facts,” a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.

Iraq is believed to be withholding large amounts of vital data on and materiel for its chemical and biological weapons, both past programs and ongoing efforts, the U.N. report charges. The report was completed Monday and is to be submitted to the Security Council on Saturday.

But winning Security Council approval of tougher sanctions against Iraq--including a proposed ban on international travel by top Iraqi intelligence and military officials--may be out of reach, despite the new report.

Russia, China and France, which as permanent members of the Security Council have veto power over resolutions, have long been eager to restore commercial ties with Iraq. Russia initially announced that it would veto such a resolution, although it changed course after appeals by President Clinton to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

The U.N. arms inspectors’ report to the Security Council reveals new information about Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare programs.

Iraq confessed that it had tested long-distance missiles loaded with a harmless chemical in 1985--on the grounds that it was determining whether an enemy country could do the same. After concluding that it could be done, Baghdad claimed, it abandoned the program.

But in 1990, the regime of President Saddam Hussein now says, its military industries launched a full-scale program that produced 80 missile warheads loaded with deadly toxins and germs in a brief three months--an abrupt and unlikely scenario, U.N. inspectors suspect. The team of international experts so far has been unable to verify the fate of all 80 warheads, and of any others that Iraq might have produced.

“These warheads are one of many big issues remaining,” said a U.N. source who has seen the arms inspectors’ report. Most of Iraq’s arms research and development before the 1991 Persian Gulf War was on chemical and biological agents that had a long storage life. Much of what was produced then may still be active today, U.N. inspectors fear.

More than six years after the Gulf War ended, Iraq still denies U.N. arms inspectors access to many of its prime weapons sites. The main obstacle has been Iraq’s elite Special Security Organization, which protects the president and the country’s ongoing weapons procurement and development. It is run by Hussein’s younger son, Osai.

U.N. inspectors say Iraq usually allows access when there is little or nothing to show but forbids entry to places where weapons programs are still active.

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Meanwhile, Iraqi warplanes during the past week have been crossing into U.N.-imposed “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq between 10 and 20 times a day, U.S. officials said. In response, the aircraft carrier Nimitz is being dispatched to the Persian Gulf to prove that the United States is serious about enforcing the “no-fly” zones, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said Monday in Paris after talks with French Defense Minister Alain Richard.

Cohen said the ship’s movements have nothing to do with U.S. hostility toward the Iranian government, as initially reported. “As I explained to Minister Richard, the deployment order cited only Iraq and did not refer to Iran,” he said at a joint news conference.

At the United Nations, Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoun said that the presence of the Nimitz will not help resolve differences. “We don’t think that sending warships will be in any way constructive in helping the region to stabilize and to provide peaceful situations,” he said.

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Times staff writers Craig Turner at the United Nations and John-Thor Dahlburg in Paris contributed to this report.