Excerpts from previous political updates, by subject:

10-22-02

Moving toward action in Iraq?

The decision in Washington immediately shifted the world's attention to New York, where the United States had been lobbying the other members of the U.N. Security Council. U.S. diplomats sought a new resolution strengthening the U.N. inspections mandate and specifying enforcement in case of Iraqi non-compliance. The U.S. efforts followed President Bush's warning on September 12 that if the United Nations did not enforce its oft-flouted resolutions on Iraqi disarmament, it risked irrelevancy. To buttress his argument, he supplied a twenty-one page "background paper" listing, among other things, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Skeptics noted that the list appeared bereft of new information about Iraq's specific weapon activities.

Between Bush's warning in September, and Congress' action in October, Saddam tried to turn the tables. He suddenly invited the U.N. inspectors back to Iraq "without conditions." U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed immediately to block any such move until the United Nations could pass a new, tougher resolution on inspections. This set the stage for a showdown at the U.N. Security Council.

As for the U.N. inspectors, they declared themselves ready for work. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iraq's nuclear program, said it could begin within days. The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, in charge of missiles and of chemical and biological weapons, was not so nimble. It first announced that it wouldn't be ready for two months, but then predicted that it could start monitoring a few sites within weeks of being asked to begin. Both the Agency and the Commission, however, agreed to postpone any inspection visits to Iraq until the Security Council had decided on new inspection requirements.

Alleged links to terrorism

There is still no clear proof of an Iraqi link to the attacks on September 11, despite media reports of meetings between the September 11 terrorists and Iraqi agents. Nevertheless, in mid-March C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet specifically declined to rule out Iraqi involvement, citing Iraq's and Al Qaeda's "mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family."

New allegations of Iraqi links to Al Qaeda appeared in the March 25, 2002, edition of the New Yorker magazine. New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg, after a trip to the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, alleged that Kurdish officials told him of a terrorist group based in northern Iraq - called Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) - that had direct links to Al Qaeda. The group was said to consist of Kurdish Islamists and an unknown number of "so-called Arab Afghans - Arabs, from southern Iraq and elsewhere, who trained in the camps of Al Qaeda." According to the Kurdish officials, the Ansar al-Islam group grew out of the ideas of Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Osama bin Laden's deputy in Al Qaeda. Goldberg wrote that Kurdish intelligence officials told him that the decision to form Ansar al- Islam on September 1, 2001 was overseen by three Arabs who had been trained in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and who provided $300,000 in seed money. The intelligence officials said that Ansar al-Islam was shielding Al Qaeda members with Saddam Hussein's approval.

Goldberg also reported on a visit to a Kurdish-controlled prison in Sulaimaniya, where he said he interviewed several prisoners who described links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. One was an Iraqi intelligence officer who said he had provided protection when Al Qaeda's Zawahiri came to Baghdad in 1992 to meet with Saddam. Another prisoner, Haqi Ismail, who admitted being in an Al Qaeda camp, was said to be suspected by Kurdish intelligence officials of being a liaison between Al Qaeda and Saddam's intelligence service. A third prisoner, an Iranian Arab, claimed that he was one of Al Qaeda's main weapon smugglers. This prisoner told of taking several dozen refrigerator motors, each with a cannister filled with liquid (he assumed it could be a chemical or biological agent) into Afghanistan for the Iraqi Mukhabarat in 2000. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, this same prisoner told of an Iraqi plot to blow up a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf. He said he had met with high-ranking Iraqi officials who told him that $16 million had been set aside for the task, which was to be "the first of nine."