Iraq Faces Tougher Sanctions after U.N. Vote

3192 0 165
HIGHLIGHTSAnglo-American Jets Attack Air Defenses in Southern Iraq|| Additions to the U.N. Sanctions List Include Drugs to Protect Iraqi Soldiers from Poison Gas and Anthrax|| Iraq Accuses Washington of Tempting Iraqi Scientists to Leave the Country|| UN Inspectors Search Seven Suspect Sites Monday|| STORYIraq, its economy in tatters, faced tougher sanctions on Tuesday after the United Nations named goods such as drugs, trucks and boats that cannot be imported without prior approval.

The 15-nation U.N. Security Council voted 13-0 to adopt the resolution expanding the list of civilian goods under sanctions. Russia and Syria abstained.

Iraq said the resolution would aggravate the suffering of its people, who have been under U.N. economic sanctions since Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990.

Additions to the U.N. sanctions list range from drugs to protect Iraqi soldiers from poison gas and anthrax to boats like those used in a deadly attack on a U.S. warship two years ago.

ANGLO-AMERICAN JETS ATTACK IRAQI POSITIONS IN SOUTHERN IRAQ

U.S. and British warplanes attacked Iraqi air defenses after the Iraqis flew military aircraft into the southern "no-fly" zone, the U.S. military said.

At its headquarters In Florida, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement that U.S. and British aircraft used precision-guided weapons to target Iraqi air defense communications facilities and an air defense mobile radar in strikes on Monday.

It marked the second straight day and the fourth in five days that the Western aircraft have attacked Iraqi targets in the southern no-fly zone.

TEMPTING IRAQI SCIENTISTS

A top adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the United States was trying to tempt scientists to leave Iraq and entice them to giving false information with financial offers.

U.N. inspectors began interviewing scientists over Iraq's alleged weapons programs last week but the United States wants some of the interviews to take place outside Iraq.

"This is an American plan with a clear aim. If it succeeds in tempting some of those (scientists) through promises or maybe also through threats it might get information, also false information," Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's scientific adviser, said.

Hussam Mohammad Amin, the head of the Iraqi Monitoring Directorate, told Qatar's al-Jazeera television station Iraq had not rejected the idea of taking the scientists abroad.

Asked what guarantees Iraq sought, he said: "The guarantees concern above all what the scientists will say. Perhaps something will be attributed to them which they did not state and this would be dangerous and can be used as a justification to launch an attack on Iraq."

U.N. INSPECTIONS

U.N. weapons inspectors searched at least seven suspect sites in Iraq on Monday, and the head of a missile facility accused them of acting like gangsters.

The inspectors counted missile engines at Al Sumoud Company of Al Karamah Company in Abu Ghreib, 16 miles west of Baghdad.

U.N. experts, absent since December 1998, have been working flat out since resuming inspections on November 27 to check on Baghdad's assertion that it has no banned weapons.

There are now 110 inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in Iraq

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqi workers push missile heads inside al-Sumoud Company in abu Ghrib west of Baghdad, during a U.N. weapons inspection stop December 30, 2002. (Akram Salah/Re

Related Articles