Iraq Severs Ties With UN Inspectors

December 19, 1998

Iraq Severs Ties With UN Inspectors

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Filed at 10:34 p.m. EST

By The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Anti-aircraft fire streaked through skies over Baghdad Saturday night, seeking to fend off a fourth and final wave of American and British airstrikes. A defiant Iraq declared it would cut off all dealings with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Hours after the final attack, President Clinton suspended military action against Iraq, saying the ``operation is now complete.'' He reiterated a call for the end of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's rule.
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, ``We set out to diminish and degrade Saddam's military capability, and we have done so.''
After the announcement that airstrikes would be suspended, some Iraqis said the decision to bomb had only produced more destruction for Iraq and failed to change the situation of Iraqis suffering under U.N. sanctions.
``What has he gained? All these missiles and destruction,'' said Muhend Fawzi, an engineer. ``All this suffering, and it ends as if nothing has happened.''
Fawzi was among a group of young Iraqis who spent the past four nights in a government shelter in fear of the airstrikes.
``I'm afraid it isn't taking us anywhere. Again we are back to where we started,'' said one of Fawzi's companions, laborer Khalid Zuheir.
Earlier, as dusk fell and Iraqis broke their first day of fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, sirens wailed a warning for citizens to take cover.
A half-dozen loud blasts rocked the capital, indicating missile hits. The explosions rattled windows at the Information Ministry, where most reporters are based.
Two of the missiles struck near the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, gouging a 40-foot hole into the earth. The impact shattered the windows of the small, one-story information office, responsible for social security, pensions, prisons and benefits for the handicapped. Three night guards were injured in the blast, Iraqi officials said.
Witnesses said three missiles struck near Al-Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad and that smoke could be seen rising from the area.
U.S. and British forces have pummeled the Iraqi capital since early Thursday in an air offensive intended to punish Saddam's regime for obstructing the work of the U.N. weapons inspectors.
Clinton has said he timed the air attacks to avoid offending Muslims by starting the bombing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began Saturday in Iraq.
At the Pentagon, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Saturday night that U.S. and British forces struck nearly 100 targets in Iraq during the 70-hour air offensive, which he called ``highly successful.''
Among the sites hit, Shelton said, were seven or eight of Saddam's palaces, and the focus of Saturday's final attacks were Republican Guard forces that are the most potent arm of Saddam's military.
The president said the United States will maintain a strong military presence in the Persian Gulf and ``we will remain ready to use it'' if Saddam tries to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction, strikes at his neighbors, challenges allied aircraft or moves against Kurdish rebels.
Defense Secretary William Cohen expressed regret at the prolonged suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of U.N. economic sanctions and the Western bombing campaigns. ``Only Saddam and his brutally destructive regime are to blame,'' Cohen said.
Iraqi's vice president asserted, meanwhile, that Baghdad would end all dealings with the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM, in response to the airstrikes.
The commission was created at the end of the 1991 Gulf War to oversee the destruction of banned Iraqi weapons and the means to produce them.
``Everything related to inspections and the Special Commission is now behind us,'' said Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi vice president.
Earlier this week, UNSCOM reported that Iraq had failed to cooperate fully with its arms inspectors, and Clinton cited that as the trigger for air attacks.
The government said earlier that 25 people were killed and 75 injured in the first two nights of attacks. On Saturday, the state-run Iraqi News Agency said five more people died and 21 were wounded in a missile attack on the Al-Riyad neighborhood of the northern town of Kirkuk.
Ramadan declined to give casualty figures, but said that the number of civilians who had been killed ``was 10 times more than military men.''
He said that 12 students died and many more were wounded Friday night when a missile hit a dormitory in the northern province of Tameem.
On the streets of Baghdad, a large crowd gathered for the funeral Saturday of a child Iraq claims was killed in the raids.
People at the funeral protested the strikes, chanting ``Genocide by America'' as the child's coffin was paraded through the streets.
During another attack before dawn Saturday, reporters in the Iraqi capital saw fiery streaks from what appeared to be Tomahawk cruise missiles arcing across the sky and landing in giant fireballs. Warheads exploded a few seconds later, lighting the pre-dawn horizon in a red glow that silhouetted palm trees against the dark sky.
Baghdad residents said damage from the missile attacks late Friday and early Saturday was heavy and that a number of buildings in the center of the capital -- including palaces, security headquarters and offices of the ruling Baath Party -- had been hit.
The walls of the Military Industrialization Corporation, which oversees state-run factories, were still standing, but the building appeared to have been gutted by missiles.
The official Iraqi News Agency said a missile had damaged a historic Abbasid palace in Baghdad, parts of which date to 1180.
Ramadan focused on civilian sites that were hit, confirming earlier reports that telephone communications with southern provinces had been broken. He also charged that the United States and Britain had hit an electricity plant and destroyed a factory that had been inspected by UNSCOM.

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