US: US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell is expected to announce today that the US has found "troubling omissions" in Iraq's declaration of weapons of mass destruction, but that this does not amount to an immediate cause of war.
President Bush will nevertheless use what one official called "glaring omissions" in the declaration to build a strong public case against Iraq, starting with a major speech tomorrow in Washington.
The United Nations Security Council will meet this morning to hear an assessment of the declaration from chief weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix, and the head of the nuclear weapons inspection team, Mr Mohamed ElBaradei.
The declaration includes the omission of chemical and biological ingredients, known as chemical precursors and growth media, which previous inspections discovered were in Iraq's arsenal but had never been accounted for, The Irish Times has learned.
Other alleged gaps in the declaration, such as information about imported aluminium tubes which could be used in nuclear programmes, are based on US intelligence and not on what the inspectors have established, sources said.
Before weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had been able to ascertain that Iraq held supplies of chemical precursors and growth media in 1991, but not where they were used, disposed of, or stored. The 12,000-page report does not say what the Iraqis did with them.
Ireland and the other nine rotating members of the UN Security Council were given copies of the report and compact discs on Tuesday evening, minus material removed by UN officials which could become a guide to making weapons of mass destruction. The five permanent members received their copies on December 8th.
The copy, which fills a bulky cardboard box, will arrive in Dublin this morning for analysis by Irish officials, a spokesman for the Irish mission to the UN said.
Senior advisers to Mr Bush have been debating in the White House for two days how to react to the Iraqi declaration, which under UN Resolution 1441 requires Baghdad to give a "currently accurate, full and complete" account of all aspects of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.
The fact that the US response will be given by Mr Powell indicates that the President has opted to continue working through the UN for the present, and that - barring any serious incident in Iraq - a decision on military intervention has been put off until the inspectors' first full report is given to the Security Council on January 27th.
Mr Bush has threatened "zero tolerance" on the declaration, but is keen to build an international consensus to get maximum co-operation from allies in the event of war, diplomats said.
The US is, however, expected to use the flawed declaration to increase pressure on UN inspectors to seek interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists outside of Iraq.
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Mr Sergei Lavrov, insisted this week that only the weapons inspectors could determine whether there was a material breach of the resolution.
If Dr Blix believed there was a violation, he would report that to the council, said Mr Lavrov, adding, "There is no other way and everybody knows it."
Dr Blix was briefed privately on the Washington assessment of the declaration by US non-proliferation official Mr John Wolf on Tuesday, and will give a preliminary overview of the declaration to the 15-member Security Council this morning.
Mr Powell said yesterday, "There are problems with the declaration, problems of gaps and omissions, and all this is troublesome." He said other permanent members "also see deficiencies".
The US would wait for the UN weapons inspectors to give their analysis "and then work with our partners in the Security Council to determine the way to go forward", said Mr Powell. He was speaking after a meeting in Washington with EU officials Mr Chris Patten and Mr Javier Solana, and Mr Per Stig Moller, the Danish Foreign Minister.
"Iraq was given an opportunity to co-operate with the international community to stop deceiving the world with respect to its weapons of mass destruction," he said. "We are not encouraged that they have gotten the message or will co-operate based on what we have seen so far." But we will stay within the UN process" and "discuss how to move forward in the weeks ahead."