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Iraq Invites U.S. Delegation To Search For Downed U.S. Pilot
WASHINGTON, March 24 (IslamOnline and News Agencies) -Baghdad offered Sunday to receive a U.S. delegation to look into the fate of a U.S. navy pilot shot down over Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, in a "goodwill" gesture as Iraq faces U.S. threats of attack.
"We announce that the Iraqi authorities concerned are prepared to receive a U.S. delegation to discuss the issue," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement received by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The team would be accompanied by "a U.S. media delegation to cover and document" the visit, to take place "under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)," he said.
Michael Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet aircraft crashed in the desert west of Baghdad on January 17, 1991, the first night of the allied air war against Iraq, apparently after being hit by a missile fired by an Iraqi aircraft.
The Pentagon last year took the unusual step of changing the status of Lieutenant Commander Speicher from killed-in-action to missing-in-action.
Baghdad was inviting a U.S. team to "prove its goodwill and refute repeated U.S. slanders against Iraq," the foreign ministry spokesman said.
A U.S.-led international coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, seven months after Iraq's August 1990 invasion of the oil-rich emirate.
The Iraqi spokesman said Baghdad wanted the U.S. delegation to be accompanied by former chief United Nations Special Committee (UNSCOM) on Iraq arms inspector Scott Ritter, who inspected the site of the crash in December 1991 "and concluded that the pilot was devoured by wolves."
The spokesman said the United States had concluded that the pilot was killed in action before changing his status, and "we have nothing to add to the conclusions reached by the U.S. team," which inspected the site of the crash in 1995.
A U.S. intelligence assessment made public on March 15 said Speicher probably survived the crash of his fighter jet, and if so he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis.
"We assess that Iraq can account for Speicher but that Baghdad is concealing information about his fate," said the document, which was dated March 27, 2001.
Speicher's case gained renewed public attention in the United States following a Washington Times report last week that a British intelligence source, who had been in Iraq, learned that a U.S. pilot was being held captive in Baghdad.
His case has returned to the fore amid threats by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration to take military action against Iraq and try to overthrow the regime unless it allows U.N. arms inspectors back into the country.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week the Pentagon did not know whether Speicher was alive and being held captive.
"We have a very real interest in his circumstance, if he's alive - indeed, in knowing about his circumstance even if he's not alive," or whether he was taken captive by Baghdad, Rumsfeld said.
After the war, Iraq gave U.S. authorities a container that supposedly held Speicher's remains, but DNA testing showed they were not his.
A dissident Iraqi officer said in an interview published Saturday that Baghdad captured the U.S. pilot.
Colonel Mohammad al-Abdullah was quoted by Al-Mutamar, mouthpiece of the U.S.-backed opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), as saying he was a member of a Republican Guard special unit, which captured Speicher and two other pilots whose aircraft were shot down on the first day of the war.
The newspaper published what it said was a document from the Iraqi presidency provided by Abdullah and dated December 19, 1998, in which "the American prisoner" is mentioned.
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