August 20, 2001. Copyright 2001. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

Saddam pushes Western patience to the limit

LONDON, August 20, Graphic News: Over the last seven months Saddam Hussein has managed to annoy the U.S.-British coalition by attacking aircraft patrolling the Òno-fly zones,Ó has lost support from the French government for an end to sanctions and driven IsraelÕs Ariel Sharon to distraction by sponsoring a car bomb attack within Israel.

Iraqi air defences have targeted or fired on aircraft flying over the southern and northern no-fly zones a total of 432 times so far this year compared with 366 times in all of last year. In response, the coalition has launched strikes on 26 days. In the two biggest attacks, on February 16 and August 10, dozens of U.S. and British warplanes struck three air defence sites in southern Iraq with precision-guided bombs and missiles, in a raid targeting BaghdadÕs increasingly sophisticated anti-aircraft network.

The three targets were a fibre-optic air defence control complex located near An-Numaniyah, and radar and anti-aircraft missile bases near An-Nasiriyah. 

Pentagon officials said last month that these bases came close to hitting a high-altitude U.S. U-2 spy plane with a missile on July 24.

The An-Numaniyah and An-Nasiriyah facilities will be centre stage on Thursday (August 23) when a U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Vann van Diepen, arrives in China to discuss possible Chinese violations of a pledge not to provide Saddam with sophisticated technology to enhance air defences, and violating UN sanctions.

Beijing has denied that Chinese companies are helping Iraq, but U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in March that Chinese officials had privately confirmed the companies were working in Iraq and promised the activities would cease.

In addition, Iraq has rebuilt two weapons factories in Falluja, west of Baghdad. These factories -- which included a chemical weapons plant -- were destroyed by coalition air strikes in December 1998.

FranceÕs President Jaques Chirac and prime minister Lionel Jospin are equally fed up with Saddam. After campaigning in the UN Security Council for an end to sanctions they are now giving unpublicised support to the U.S.-British coalition following annullment of French oil and reconstruction contracts, agreed to start when sanctions end.

The letters of intent for work in the large Majnoun and Hahr Amer oilfields are estimated to be worth US$4.5 billion. Baghdad has now offered this work to Russia, with smaller offers to Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

But it is Israel which is most angry with Saddam. In late July Israeli security forces thwarted an alleged Iraqi plot to detonate a car bomb at the entrance to the arrivals hall at Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv.

Israeli officials said that the leader of the terror group was Muhammad Kandas, a West Bank Palestinian who had been recruited in Baghdad as an Iraqi agent.

Under interrogation Kandas said he returned to Baghdad in May to be re-trained in the use of explosives. In July, with other Palestinians allegedly working for the West Bank branch of IraqÕs BaÕath party, KandasÕs group built and detonated a roadside bomb near an Israeli army patrol, but caused no damage. A second attack -- the airport car bomb attempt -- failed and Kandas was arrested.

Military observers say that with so many people wanting to see SaddamÕs departure from the world stage, George W. BushÕs administration intends to hold Saddam to account with further air strikes, possibly before the annual autumn session of the UN General Assembly in September.

The next three weeks could be a nail-biting time for Saddam and the Iraqi troops based at his air defence facilities and weapons factories around Baghdad.
/ENDS
Sources: JaneÕs Foreign Report, Associated Press, Reuters