*EPF202 12/03/2002
Rumsfeld Criticizes Iraq on Weapons Programs, Human Rights Record
(Defense Department Report, December 3: Operational Update) (380)

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged that the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is pursuing its weapons of mass destruction programs and continuing repressive human rights practices.

At a Pentagon briefing December 3, Rumsfeld said that "for more than a decade Iraq has been pursuing weapons of mass destruction, in defiance now of ... some 16 resolutions of the [U.N.] Security Council."

Only when President Bush took the case to Congress first, then to the United Nations, and made clear that he, the United States, and a coalition, were prepared to take military action if Iraq refused to disarm itself of those weapons did the Iraqi regime allow weapons inspectors to return, he said.

"With the passage of the new U.N. resolution and the strong statement by our NATO allies in Prague, Saddam Hussein now faces a choice: to disarm or face the possibility of being disarmed," he said.

Rumsfeld said that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 also requires Iraq to end repression of its civilian population.

"That repression is well documented in the British government's new human rights dossier, which details the systematic terror that the Iraq regime has and is currently inflicting on its own people," he said. "According to the U.K. report, some 100,000 Kurds in northern Iraq -- innocent men, women and children -- have been killed.

"Shi'ite Muslims, who make up more than half of the population of that country, have also been systematically attacked, and millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee their homeland," Rumsfeld said. That this pattern of human rights violations "seems not of concern to some nations is disturbing."

At the same briefing, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States and coalition forces are continuing to make progress in helping Afghanistan establish its national army. A fifth Afghan battalion has just completed basic training, and a sixth, composed of more than 700 recruits, soon will begin the 10-week training program under the French, he said.

Myers said coalition aircraft have been fired upon on 17 of the last 24 days in operations over the Southern and Northern no-fly zones in Iraq.

He highlighted one case in which coalition forces responded by dropping 23 precision-guided weapons from 13 combat aircraft on Iraqi air defense sites in the south, near al-Basra and al Kut.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Return to Public File Main Page

Return to Public Table of Contents