Civilians Bore Brunt of Attacks, Senior Iraqi Says

A senior Iraqi official said Monday that a four-day air offensive by the United States and Britain destroyed two factories making parts for Iraq’s short-range missile program and killed 62 military personnel, plus a “much, much higher” number of civilians.

Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz gave his government’s first detailed account of military losses at an evening news conference, ridiculing U.S. and British assertions that the missile-and-bomb campaign had seriously undermined Iraq’s 400,000-strong armed forces. The only real damage was to civilian infrastructure, he said, dubbing that “the American way of war.”

In tones both angry and righteous, Aziz said the United States should have no hope of reviving the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

“The moment America and Britain launched missiles against Iraq, they killed UNSCOM,” he said.

Emboldened by widespread criticism of the bombing campaign, Iraq appears to have increased its demands of the international community rather than diminished them.

Before the bombings, Baghdad had been seeking from the U.N. Security Council a “comprehensive review” of its compliance with U.N. resolutions--a review that it hoped would lead to a relaxation of economic sanctions.

Now, according to Aziz, Baghdad is demanding immediate lifting of the sanctions, an end to the arms monitoring program, and the condemnation of U.S. and British “naked aggression” by the rest of the world.

According to Aziz, the only reason Iraq has been continually subjected to weapons inspections, attacks and a strict oil embargo is because it is the only state in the region that has refused to submit to American “hegemony.”

“They thought foolishly that when they sent a few hundred missiles against Iraq that the people of Iraq would rise up against the leadership. This is fantasy. This is a Rambo-like fantasy,” he said.

Aziz accused the United States of engaging in a “Zionist, imperialist conspiracy” to destroy his country, and said President Clinton was either lying or deluded when he said that there was support in the Arab world for the air assault.

In another development Monday, U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator Hans von Sponeck said that the military strikes had disrupted distribution of supplies under the U.N.-approved oil-for-food program but that evacuated U.N. aid workers will be returning to the country today.

Aziz said Iraq is not convinced that the United States and Britain have actually broken off the attacks, and so the country’s military forces remain on “red alert.”

Among other precautions Iraq took before the bombings, diplomats here say, was to activate volunteers from Hussein’s Baath Party to stand guard at intersections and prevent any disorder resulting from the bombings. Clumps of these party activists, dressed in military fatigues and civilian clothes, could still be seen in Baghdad on Monday night, camped with their automatic rifles around burning palm logs to stay warm.

At the United Nations, the Security Council began sifting through the rubble of disarmament diplomacy Monday to try to develop a comprehensive new policy toward Iraq. The future of the 8-year-old system of U.N. arms inspections and of Richard Butler, chairman of UNSCOM, was in question.

“Obviously, we are now all going to focus on the questions of the morning after,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters. “I will be discussing and talking to council members. I have also been on the phone with some of the leaders around the world over the weekend. And we will see where we go from here.”

Russia has called upon Butler, a blunt-talking Australian, to resign, which he has refused to do. China and France also have shown open dissatisfaction with Butler, who is backed by the United States and Britain.

Chief U.S. delegate Peter Burleigh said he hoped that UNSCOM is not dead. “UNSCOM is a very important mechanism of the Security Council to ensure the disarmament of Iraq,” he said. “We look forward to UNSCOM’s early and full return to Iraq.”

In Washington, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni said that last week’s strikes hit 85% of their targets, in most cases successfully. Zinni is commander of U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen said the strikes delayed Iraq’s development of ballistic missiles by at least a year and diminished its ability to attack its neighbors.

Responding to statements by Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about significant damage done to Iraq’s elite Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units, Aziz said the actual casualty list proved otherwise.

According to the deputy prime minister, only 38 of the Republican Guards and Special Republican Guards were killed, and 24 members of the regular army, for a total of 62. An additional 180 troops were wounded, he said.

He said that he did not have a civilian casualty figure yet but that it would be “much, much higher.”

“With all their sophisticated missiles and high-tech weapons, these are the real results,” said Aziz. “They lie, they boast, they disinform and misinform.”

On Sunday, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nizar Hamdoun, said that Iraq’s total casualties were believed to be in the “thousands,” but so far officials in Baghdad have not identified any places where massive civilian casualties occurred. In the capital, between 30 and 40 civilians were killed, according to a survey of hospitals by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Meanwhile, Iraq confirmed repeated attacks on two factories near Baghdad used to build short-range missiles, weapons that were not forbidden by the cease-fire agreement after the Persian Gulf War.

Officials quoted by Associated Press said the Nasser factory in Taji, 40 miles north of Baghdad, and the Nida factory, south of the capital, were heavily bombed and that weapons production had been halted.

Aziz said many of the military sites were already being stringently monitored by the U.N. teams before they were attacked and therefore could not have been used to produce banned biological, chemical, nuclear or ballistic weapons.

According to Aziz, the bulk of the Republican Guards escaped unharmed but many of their barracks and buildings were destroyed.

“These barracks and buildings can and certainly will be rebuilt,” he said.

Times staff writer John J. Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.

* FORCED RELOCATIONS: Kurds are being expelled from oil-rich areas of Iraq. A10