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Pentagon Claims Iraq Fired Missile Into Kuwaiti Airspace
WASHINGTON, July 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Despite poor visibility and lack of an electronic signal to indicate the origin of the missile, Pentagon officials said Iraq fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. surveillance aircraft patrolling Kuwait.
"We had indications yesterday (Thursday) that Iraq had fired a surface to air missile into Kuwaiti airspace," said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the French news agency AFP reported.
"Apparently the target was a U.S. aircraft performing a southern watch mission," the official continued.
The alleged missile failed to hit the U.S. target, and U.S. patrols were continuing normally, the official added, according to AFP.
The missile was said to have been fired in the direction of a Navy E-2 Hawkeye from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Constellation, and was claimed to have gone several miles into Kuwaiti airspace, according to the anonymous U.S. official.
Despite poor visibility and lack of an electronic signal indicating the origin of the missile, the U.S. insisted it was an Iraqi missile fired at a U.S. target.
The U.S. official said the sighting could not be immediately confirmed through other means, BBC's online service reported.
He said it was possible the missile was fired ballistically, meaning it was not guided by radar and in which case it could not be tracked by its electronic emissions.
"There were no electronic fingerprints. Visibility was poor. But our best guess was that it was a surface-to-air missile fired ballistically in the vicinity of the E-2. The missile burst about a mile away" from the aircraft, the official said, quoted by AFP.
U.S. and British jets have been patrolling no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq for about a decade now in an operation allegedly designed to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups.
Iraq has long disputed the legitimacy of the zones and has regularly complained to the United Nations about continued U.S.-British violation of Iraqi airspace.
Meanwhile, a senior U.N. official on Friday dismissed Iraqi complaints about the U.N. blocking health experts from visiting Baghdad, news agencies reported.
Last week, Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed al-Dhouri accused the United Nations of blocking health experts from visiting Baghdad to conduct a study on the impact of U.N. sanctions on the deteriorating health sector in sanctions-hit Iraq.
But, in a written response Friday, U.N. Undersecretary-General Benon Sevan, who is in charge of the U.N. Iraq program, denied his office had received any requests for a visit from the World Health Organization.
"I should like to assure you that had there been such a request, security clearance would have been given promptly," Sevan wrote al-Dhouri.
"I very much regret, however, that the above matter has been used as yet another opportunity to make aspersions against United Nations personnel ... questioning our integrity as international civil servants and our commitment to assist the Iraqi people at this very difficult time," Sevan wrote.
Former United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, has lately called for an end to sanctions imposed on Iraq, saying he did not feel the country posed a danger any longer.
He accused the United States of deliberately provoking confrontations with Iraq, which, he says, was almost fully disarmed by 1995.
Ritter says the United States undermined the work of UNSCOM, the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, and used the issue to push Iraq towards conflict with the West, BBC's online service reported.
Ritter says his team was satisfied Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995.
But, he says, the U.S. Government deliberately set new standards of disarmament criteria to maintain U.N. sanctions against Baghdad and justify bombing raids.
In his new documentary film, In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq, which was premiered at the United Nations, Ritter said UNSCOM chief Richard Butler told his inspectors: "You have to provoke a confrontation...so the U.S. can start bombing" before 15 March, a Muslim holy period, BBC added.
Ritter, an ex-U.S. marine intelligence officer, said Iraq "did co-operate to a very significant degree with the U.N. inspection process" and he blamed the United States for the eventual breakdown of the initial purposes for the inspections.
Last week, Sevan dismissed yet another Iraqi complaint about financial improprieties within the oil-for-food program his department administers.
The program operates outside 11-year-old sanctions imposed on Iraq, and prevents Baghdad from selling oil except for buying humanitarian supplies.
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