Mideast Roundup

January 6, 2002

Iraq Crisis

Ultimatum Comes and Goes - What Next?

New Year's Day marked the expiry of Washington's final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein - without his response. He was given this deadline for confessing to - and delivering up - his unconventional weapons arsenal to the UN - or undergoing oft-postponed full-scale US military action

Four hours before the year 2002 ended, with no definite answers coming from Baghdad, the Pentagon ordered two brigades of the crack US 3rd Infantry Division to start moving toward the Persian Gulf for the confrontation with Iraq. Equipped with heavy armor and supported by nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, the division is arguably the best desert warfare unit in the US Army. The 1st and the 3rd brigades are joining the 3rd division's second brigade which has been in Kuwait for months, together with most of the division's equipment. Its commander, like his fellow-generals at the head of other US forces in-theater, is authorized by President George W. Bush to decide on a tactical nuclear response -- without referring to higher authority -- should their troops inside or outside Iraq come under nuclear, biological or chemical attack.

The Pentagon will also consign three additional forces to round off its troop complement for the war against Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report the next contingents to leave for the Gulf are the First Marines Expeditionary Force from Camp Pendleton, California, three light divisions from Germany and the 101st  Airborne Division that will take off with its combat equipment from Fort Bragg in N. Carolina.

These deployments will double US strength already present in Gulf bases - some 60,000 troops.

The takeoff of the101st Airborne Division will provide the strongest sign that the war has begun, because some of its combat units are assigned to bypassing Gulf bases and parachuting directly into Iraq.

Once begun, some well-informed military sources predict that the transfer of American combat troops will be completed by January 10-12. From that moment on, the US army will ready to launch its full-scale offensive against Iraq - albeit some days earlier than generally predicted.

For ten days, the Pentagon held this complementary force back to give the Iraqi ruler a chance to respond to Washington's last chance offer.

As DEBKAfile reported on December 29, British premier Tony Blair handed this take-it or leave-it offer to Syrian president Bashar Assad who ended a visit to London on December 20. Assad lost not time in passing the ultimatum on to the Iraqi ruler, whom he met secretly in Baghdad on December 21 immediately after returning home. (Details of US proposal appear in <#Hot>Hot Points 29 Dec. at the bottom of this edition).

The ultimatum was brief and to the point: In return for publicly revealing the full particulars of his nuclear, chemical, biological and missile warfare systems and handing them over to UN inspectors, Saddam would be allowed to step down peacefully under an American guarantee for his and his family's safety. In token of Washington's good faith, the movement of US troops to Persian Gulf stations was held up when only roughly half the strength was in place. The other half was held in abeyance to give Saddam time to respond.

There was no deadline on the ultimatum, only a clear message that time was short. The resumption of the interrupted flow of US troops would suffice to inform Baghdad time was up and war preparations had proceeded past the point of no return.

But Saddam, instead of responding directly, used the ten days from receipt of the offer up until January 1 to try and bluff Washington with misleading clues into inferring that he was seriously looking at its terms.

The clues came in different forms.

For instance, fresh reports sourced in the Gulf region portrayed Saddam as a "professional survivor", who was realistic enough to grasp that his army stood no chance against the US superpower and could be counted on to treat the threat sensibly.

Then, too, there was a rash of rumors that building, inexplicably halted six weeks ago, had resumed at a villa complex known as "Saddam City" in the northern suburbs of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Some Western intelligence sources believe the project is funded from Iraq as a palatial asylum for Saddam and his family.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources cite US, British and Israeli intelligence agencies as not being taken in by these apparent hints of potential compliance with the US ultimatum. By Monday, December 30, they concluded Saddam was up to his old tricks to buy time for maneuver. President George W. Bush showed he was onto Saddam's game when he declared the next morning outside the Coffee Stop in Crawford, Texas, that the Iraqi leader "hasn't heard the message" - to disarm or face military action.

His comments on Iraq's ability to damage the US economy were more ominous.

Asked whether the United States could afford the $50 billion to $60 billion price tag on war against Iraq, Bush said: "An attack from Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would cripple our economy. A Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is a threat to the security of the American people."

Some pundits took this as a reference to the White House budget director's estimate of the cost of conflict in the Gulf; others that he was pointing up the differences between the Iraqi threat and the North Korean nuclear crisis. (See separate <#4>article in this issue.)

However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism and intelligence experts point to the term "Saddam Hussein's surrogate" as the key to the US President's meaning. Bush is clearly armed with intelligence information showing that Saddam's defiance in the face of the American ultimatum extends also to meticulous preparations to mount agonizing terrorist strikes against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, in reprisal for American military action.

He has, moreover, mapped a strategic course based on his interpretation of the US military operational plan against him. Saddam expects the Americans to strike Iraq from the west and south, because they assume that the bulk of the Iraqi army, save for three Republican Army divisions, will surrender immediately. He has therefore resolved to make his final stand at the two big Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Baghdad which are the bulwark of his power.

US and Iraqi intelligence appear to be in accord on one estimate, namely, that most of Iraqi territory, including its oil fields, will fall to American, British and Turkish forces by the end of February, i.e. in stage one of the conflict.

The second stage, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, is likely to open with a US-led siege of Tikrit and Baghdad of undetermined duration. Scenario one has Tikrit falling quickly - even before the second stage begins - and leaving the serious fighting for Baghdad. A second scenario posits a standoff dragging on into the summer.

Given summer temperatures of 56 degrees Centigrade (133 degrees Fahrenheit), US war planners would have to switch tactics to an air campaign or a war of attrition, postponing further ground action until the summer heat eases off in late September. Barring an anti-Saddam uprising quickly putting the two cities in US hands - and it is hard to see who would lead one - the Iraq war could stretch out to the end of October or even mid-November.

Our intelligence sources have heard that Saddam is telling his cronies that, by standing fast in Baghdad and Tikrit, Iraqi troops could give him another six months' grace in which to repulse the US offensive and save his regime. Why, then, should he bow to the Bush ultimatum?


Calling on al Qaeda

Saddam Argues Case for Joint Effort

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and counter-terrorism sources note that, in contrast to the Bush administration's difficulty to prove the interconnected rationale between a US military campaign against Iraq and the global war on terrorism, Saddam makes no effort to conceal his increasing collaboration with al Qaeda to block American goals before they get off the ground.

Our sources describe the collaboration as intensifying for the short term, although limited to partnership in terror operations against America and Israel. (Details in next <#3>article)

Saddam persuaded al Qaeda leaders in the Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan to send three elite terror executives into action on his behalf by dint of an elaborate presentation of their common interests. While not explicitly playing the Sunni vs. Shia card, it was implicit in his arguments:

One. Iraq's conquest by the US and the overthrow of his regime in favor of a Washington-backed government would lead ultimately to the creation of a Shi'ite state in southern Iraq and the demise of al Qaeda aspirations to dominate the Arabian Peninsula including Saudi Arabia.

Two. A Shi'ite state in southern Iraqi would also pose a threat to the Saudi throne and the Pakistani regime of Pervez Musharraf, by encouraging the ambitions of the large Saudi and Pakistani Shi'ite minorities. The intelligence services of al Qaeda and Pakistan would therefore do well to support Saddam in order to prevent the rise of a Shi'ite state in Iraq.

Three. Saddam drew on the Afghan War situation in October and early November of 2001 for another argument. At the start of the US invasion of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan decided in the interests of prudence to quickly pull out of the embattled country as many al Qaeda fighters as possible. They therefore airlifted several thousand Saudis, Yemenis and Pakistanis out of Afghanistan, mainly from the besieged cities of Konduz and Khanabad.

Now is the time, Saddam insisted, for al Qaeda to return to the fray by enlisting en masse to Iraq's aid. The downfall of his regime, he explained, would engender the collapse of Iraq's vital logistical and intelligence support system that sustains al Qaeda forces operating in Yemen, parts of Saudi Arabia, the vast Rub al-Khali desert, the Red Sea area and the Horn of Africa, primarily in Somalia.

Iraq, according to its ruler, is ripe for conversion into a primary launching pad for Osama Bin Laden's international terror campaign, a third command base alongside Afghanistan and Arabia.

Four. Iraq's fall into American hands would snap the communications link between those three bases and al Qaeda comrades in Pakistan. Tehran has fallen by the wayside as a link in the chain, loath to hurt the chances of a Shi'ite state rising in Iraq.

For all these reasons, Saddam appealed to Saudi general intelligence and Pakistani military intelligence to assist in the deployment of a substantial al Qaeda fighting force to Iraq.

He pointed to the fact that, already, a minimal force, backed by Iraqi military intelligence and members of the radical Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, have made important gains in battles still raging in northeast Iraq around the main Halabjah highway to Suleimaniya (as DEBK-Net-Weekly No. 90 reported on December 20, 2002 in its article, "Early Portents of Iraq Conflict").

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, Jalal Talabani's Democratic Front forces, aided by US special forces officers, have still not dislodged al Qaeda from positions it seized from pro-US Kurdish units in this region.

Saddam stresses, in his message to al Qaeda leaders, that by seizing control of a large wedge of northeastern territory, his troops buttressed by a substantial al Qaeda force would have a good chance of precluding the total US and Turkish takeover of northern Iraq. An enclave of this kind would be capable of at least partially obstructing production in the oil fields of Kirkuk and Mosul.

With the help of al Qaeda fighting forces, the Iraqi ruler is convinced he could carve out similar enclaves in eastern and southern Iraq, thereby saving the country from falling into American hands and prolonging the war for months, if not years.

Al Qaeda leaders are still considering Saddam Hussein's request for a major military force to fight for him in the war against the United States. In the meantime, they have placed three of their top commanders at his disposal for terrorist operations against their common foes in the Middle East.


Preparing bio-terror

Three Terrorist Stars Recruited

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report mounting fears within US and Israeli counter-terrorism agencies that al Qaeda's three command centers are preparing mega-terror attacks for US and Israeli targets.

They believe that, for the time being, at least, al Qaeda has foregone a nuclear, radiological or chemical option in favor of biological warfare, intending to use weapons systems believed to have been supplied by Iraqi military intelligence and already in the hands of three al Qaeda commanders: Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, nicknamed "the Mukhtar".

According to those sources, the Islamic fundamentalist group has established a headquarters in the radical Kurdish Ansar al-Islam enclave of northern Iraq, as one of its three main planning centers for strikes in the United States.

All Zarqawi, whose full name is Ahmad Fadeel Nazal Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, aka al Khalayleh, is the senior project director.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report that al Zarqawi was spotted traveling between Baghdad, the enclave's main city of Bayara, and then on to Damascus and Beirut, between November and December. This sighting gave the Bush administration its first direct proof of the terrorist link between Baghdad and al Qaeda. This is what the US President was referring to when he said on Tuesday, December 31, that "an attack from Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would cripple our economy."

Zarqawi makes his headquarters in northern Iraq; Abdullah is based in Pakistan - either in the port city of Karachi or near the border with Afghanistan; the whereabouts of Mohammed, "the Mukhtar" are unknown. He may be in Bosnia or Europe.

The biggest and most imminent threat, according to intelligence officials in the Middle East, comes from Zarqawi.

A Jordanian-Palestinian in his late 30s, he fled the kingdom in 1999 after the authorities exposed his plot to blow up hotels hosting foreign tourists visiting the kingdom for millennium celebrations. He is the only al Qaeda operative known for certain to have undergone extensive terrorist training - including airline hijacking techniques -- in Iraq's notorious Salman Pak special weapons facility. He has since established his headquarters and residence in Bayara, the North Iraqi town near Iran which is controlled by the fundamentalist Ansar al-Islam and Iraqi military intelligence.

Back in October 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported that Bayara became an al Qaeda base complete with chemical and biological training laboratories run for the group by the Iraqis.

Our counter-terrorism sources reveal that Zarqawi was also in charge of the relocation of 150 to 200 al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan to South Lebanon. His connections in Baghdad and Damascus were good enough to provide them all with traveling documents as well as money and logistical support until they landed safely in Lebanon.

The group destined for Lebanon was not chosen at random. Its members were all hardcore terrorists with special training in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Recently, the group was broken up into teams of three or four and spread out in Beirut and the southern Lebanon port cities of Sidon and Tyre. Each team represents an operational cell. According to current intelligence information, some of the cells have been assigned US targets in the Gulf and Europe while others have been ordered to carry out biological attacks in Israel.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources say that Zarqawi recently dropped out of sight, raising the suspicion that one of his mega-terror attacks was imminent.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is believed to be the highest ranking of the trio of al Qaeda commanders. Aged about 40, he is an Egyptian and member of the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Bin Laden's primary operational arm. He was one of the 500 who crossed into Sudan to join Osama bin Laden in 1991, when the al Qaeda leader moved from Afghanistan to Khartoum to set up his new headquarters.

They have been together ever since, Abdullah acting as al Qaeda's chief money man, but also active in shoring up the group's worldwide logistical network and organizing operations.

In early 2002, after the US forced the main body of al Qaeda and Taliban to flee Afghanistan and escape to Pakistan and Iran, Abdullah took over as overall al Qaeda commander in Pakistan and Kashmir. Whether his area of operational jurisdiction includes Afghanistan is not entirely clear. Many intelligence sources claim that today, Abdullah is the top man in al Qaeda, but there is no proof of this.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources have unearthed two little-known facts about this mysterious and powerful figure:

First, he lives under the full protection of Pakistan's military leaders and intelligence - the most senior al Qaeda operative to enjoy this status. Second, Abdullah was the mastermind behind the November 28 strikes against Israeli targets in Mombasa, Kenya, in which 16 people died, although the terrorist team on the spot failed to shoot down an Israel airliner with 270 people aboard.

This top al Qaeda commander has CIA and FBI officers in Pakistan chewing their nails in frustration. They usually know where he is and where he goes, but they cannot touch him because of the protective umbrella the Pakistani SIS extends him on orders from President Pervez Musharraf. The Americans have to accept that there is no point in trying to nab him because he will be forewarned and, in any case, Pakistani officers will spring him on the instant.

This standoff is the cause of friction between US special forces and their Pakistani counterparts, who are keeping the Americans on a short leash on instructions from military intelligence.

This week, a Pakistani unit exchanged fire with US troops who apparently got too close to areas Pakistani military intelligence designated as off-limits. There were rumors at the time that Abdullah was in the neighborhood of the incident. The United States responded with a B-52 bombing run against the Pakistani contingent.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources can also disclose that, while an al Qaeda operative called Mohammed Fazul led the operation against the Israeli-owned Mombasa Palace Hotel and an Arkia airliner, Abdullah was the operation's planner and supreme commander. He picked the terrorist team, decided how best to smuggle the Strela shoulder-launched missiles into Kenya and who would fire them at Mombasa airport,

Intercepts of messages between Abdullah and Zarqawi indicate it will be the latter that will orchestrate the next big al Qaeda attack in the Middle East. Counter-terrorism agencies expect him to aim for American or Israeli targets. Abdullah will meanwhile put together a large-scale strike inside the United States itself.

Al Qaeda's third command center, known as the European HQ, is headed by Mohammed, or "The Mukhtar".

He may be the lowest-ranking of the three commanders - he is not authorized to plan or carry out attacks without approval from above - but his field of operation is major, covering such key European cities as London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Prague and Moscow.

Bush has good cause to be deeply concerned over al Qaeda's potential for biological attacks. Two of the group's most prominent leaders, Zarqawi and Abdullah, enjoy the protection and help of the formidable military intelligence arms of Iraq and Pakistan, the latter ostensibly a US ally but working behind the scenes against Washington's global war against terrorism.

The US president has another worry: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could end up aligning themselves with Saddam Hussein, should he succeed in persuading al Qaeda to dispatch its fighters to Iraq and locate the group's command centers on its soil.


Linked Crises

North Korea and Iraq's 400 Nuclear Scientists

President George W. Bush views the North Korean nuclear crisis as one that can be resolved peacefully through diplomacy. US Secretary of State Colin Powell sees no crisis at all with North Korea. When Sunday, December 29, the CNN Late Edition anchorman Wolf Blitzer asked Powell in astonishment how he could deny a crisis when US intelligence reports Pyongyang as having at least 2-3 nuclear bombs, the secretary interrupted him, saying: "Don't be so breathless!"

Additional signals emanated from Washington during the week that the Bush administration is willing to play down Kim Jong-Il's nuclear program, while bent on all-out military confrontation with Iraq. Critics of this inconsistency in Washington are hard put to explain it.

Bush, like previous US presidents, has until now been at pains to maintain a delicate policy balance in the Korean Peninsula, in the same way as US administrations have always sought to chart a safe course through the China-Taiwan minefield. However, North Korea threatens to become an Asian power in its own right. It fields an immense army of 1 million troops, plus a formidable rocket and artillery arsenal. The CIA now believes Pyongyang holds two nuclear weapons, together with the ability to build five or more in the next six months.

However, North Korea's most powerful secret weapon, exposed solely by DEBKA-Net-Weekly in issues 82 (October 25, 2002), 85 (November 15, 2002) and 90 (on December 12, 2002), is its multiple stake in the Middle East.

Kim Jong-Il's uranium enrichment facilities were situated until 4-5 months ago in Iran, at the covert Arak and Natanz sites; at least one of his nukes, if not two, were manufactured there.

Therefore, any Asian framework accord for the disposal of the North Korean nuclear program would fall far short of a solution to the crisis. Even if the North Korean ruler were to pledge solemnly to shut down his weapons-grade nuclear facilities at home, they would still go on functioning in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

This dilemma acquires a further dimension with the discovery by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources of an overlap between the Korean and Iraqi nuclear crises. That overlap is located in Libya's al Kufra oasis, where some 400 of Iraq's leading nuclear scientists and technicians, the ones the UN arms inspectors are seeking to interview, are ensconced.

The Iraqi scientists are working closely with their North Korean colleagues on the development of a nuclear bomb to be shared by Libya, Iraq, Egypt and North Korea. Sources who spoke to us on condition of anonymity report too that Iraqi nuclear laboratory equipment, hunted high and low by the inspectors, have also been secreted out of Iraq to Libya.

One Libyan-North Korean reactor, if not two, are ticking over busily in the secret subterranean nuclear city built over the last decade at the al Kufra Oasis not far from the Egyptian frontier.

The United States has been told about this facility. In 1996, the Clinton administration received intelligence data from surveillance satellite photography of the oasis.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly has been given access to a first-hand report on the subject from an author whose identity we may not disclose:

In 1996, while working with Landsat photos from space, I discovered an area of Libya near the region called al-Kufra, which appeared to my eyes to have been leveled into a huge triangular area, far, far from any large populated areas. My instincts told me that I had found a possible Libyan atomic testing area. Through an Australian friend and his contacts with the Defense Dept., I was able to get a report to the DoD and the Defense Intelligence Agency. My report included photos and enhancements of same, which indicated a huge military industrial buildup. We were informed that it went to the top and we never heard a thing about it again·

"The top" then was President Bill Clinton.

The present US administration seems not to have established a clear policy line on the al Kufra nuclear installations or the deep North Korean and Iraqi involvement in the Libyan program.

However, Washington might be forced to come to some decision quite soon.

Assuming Saddam Hussein agrees to go into exile in Libya - and many intelligence agencies believe that a grand palace compound is under construction to accommodate him in Tripoli - will he and his large military and intelligence entourage be in control of the 400 Iraqi nuclear experts and gain access to the al Kufra nuclear program?

Most intelligence sources agree that the Iraqi ruler's fortune, stashed away in Gulf and Far Eastern banks, is large enough to fully support those experts' salaries and the expense of keeping them on the job. If Saddam is permitted to escape Iraq to save his country from war, yet remains in control of a functioning nuclear program, he will retain both prestige in the Arab world and a powerful card for blackmail and extortion that the United States will not be able to brush off. In some extreme circumstances, he may even threaten to turn this card over to al Qaeda.

Egypt's slice of nuclear cake

Last June, 2002, a set of intelligence reports was compiled in Washington laying bare Egypt's role in the al Kufra nuclear program, as well as the Egyptian-Libyan-Iraqi-North Korean partnership in the project.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Egypt was described as the main source of financing for the program, with Saudi assistance. Most of the Iraqi experts transited Saudi Arabia and Egypt with their families before arriving in Libya. A smaller group traveled through Yemen, Sudan and southern Egypt, making directly for al Kufra.

More recent intelligence data reveals North Korean and Chinese uranium mining experts invited by the Egyptian government to make secret surveys of uranium deposits in the Sinai Peninsular mountains of Umm Bugma. The site lies north of Egypt's Abu Rodeis oil port and its Suez Gulf oil fields.

Forty years ago, when the Cold War was at its peak, Egypt hired Polish geologists for a similar survey. They ran a test drilling until it was stopped in 1967 by Israel's conquest of the Sinai Peninsula.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources now report that the North Korean and Chinese geologists recommend that Egypt go ahead and exploit the uranium deposits to be found on two Umm Bugma mountains: Gabal Atairtir el-Dahmi, 1,047 meters above sea level, and Gabal Abu Alaqa, 704 meters above sea level. At both places they report the uranium is highly concentrated and of the necessary quality for producing enriched uranium.

Those intelligence reports stress that Egypt is eager to begin mining the uranium and intends shipping the ore for processing across the border to Al Kufra.

The question now is how long will it take for Iraq, Egypt and Libya to achieve the first all-Arab nuclear device. Since they are dependent on North Korean assistance, that question must be addressed to Kim Jong-Il.

While US officials prefer to look the other way on al Kufra - so as not to hold up any possibly deal with North Korea and to remain focused on the Iraq war - the North Korean ruler will certainly see the advantage of using its existence to enhance his leverage in any diplomatic bargaining with the Americans over his nuclear program.


The Nuclear Rush

Iran Won't Be Stopped

The top issue openly discussed in Islamabad during the Iranian president Mohammed Khatami's three-day visit to Islamabad ending Thursday, December 26, was the big gas pipe project from southern Iran via Pakistan to India.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian sources report that Pervez Musharraf is so keen on the project that, notwithstanding Pakistan-Indian frictions, he offered any guarantee Tehran wanted to secure the pipeline.

He also promised to stick to his commitment on the pipeline project regardless of American pressure on Pakistan and India to shun Iran's advances.

Important though the pipe line is, it was also used to screen an even more pressing subject of discussion. Our sources add that Khatami brought with him in secret an Iranian nuclear delegation which got together quietly with the heads of the Pakistani nuclear industry. The Iranian nuclear executives came to Islamabad in response to an assurance that Pakistan would, this time, after previous refusals, be more forthcoming on Iranian requests to share technologies for building nuclear weapons - depending on how much Iran offered to pay.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources reveal that the two sides came to terms during Khatami's visit after Iran agreed to fork out some $1 bn in the first stage and more depending on how the agreement developed.

At the same time, our Iran experts stress that decision-making in Tehran operates on more than one senior track and what Khatami agreed in Islamabad may not be definitive.

It so happens that while the Iranian president was setting up deals with the Pakistani president, intelligence and terrorist agents run by hard line spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were sent into Kashmir to set up operational links with radical Hurryat Kahsmir Conference leaders, Omar Farouq and Sheikh Abbas Ansari, and offer them generous funding. Under their auspices, several dozen Iranian agents are now operating in Indian Kashmir in the guise of businessmen, traders, irrigation experts and religious teachers. They are organizing Kashmir Muslim terrorist teams and transferring them to Iran and Lebanon for training.

The man in charge of this training program, according to our military sources, is Iranian Revolutionary Guards Col. Abbad Mir-Mohammadi.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

21 December: DEBKAfile's military and counter-terror sources report that EU Commission member Christian Waldrahs had the unhappy distinction of being the first target of an al Qaeda assassination plot executed by a Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades operative against a Western diplomat on Palestinian territory. The masked gunman missed his target, who made off in his bullet-proofed jeep and asked the nearest Israeli military roadblock for help.

DEBKAfile's sources report that, starting in November, al Qaeda units in the south Lebanese Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwa, began funneling funds to the Jenin branch of the al Aqsa Brigades. It was carried over by Mounir Maqdah, commander of an Ein Hilwa Palestinian militia.

Since then, al Qaeda has been badgering Fatah "Martyrs" to start giving value for the money sent them, i,e, to stage terrorist attacks not only against Israelis but also against the Westerners active in Palestinian areas, many of them on humanitarian missions.

Waldrahs is posted in Jenin to manage the EU's contribution for the reconstruction of the parts of the Palestinian West Bank town destroyed in the IDF's large-scale counter-terror operation last April. He suddenly discovered that the Palestinians he was aiding, while receiving funds from Europe, were also taking money, as well as operational directives, from the notorious Islamic fundamentalist terror organization.

Determined to check out his discovery, the German diplomat called Saturday afternoon on the Jenin Fatah secretary Kadura, informing no one but his host he was coming. Therefore, only communication between him and al Qaeda could have enabled the assassination plot to be set up at short notice.

Many European officials felt safe and at home in Palestinian West Bank towns. Now they are discovering that those towns, especially Jenin, are about as safe as Chechnya.

21 December:

December 18: From Powell to Blix:

Before you present your first report on the team's findings in Iraq to the UN Secretary and Security Council, may I remind you of our prior understandings:

1.
You will specify that the December 7 Iraqi arms declaration denying possession of weapons of mass destruction is in fact a rehash of old materials and full of gaps. But you will not state that Iraq is in breach of Security Council Resolution 1441.

2.
You will state that secret data from the United States and the United Kingdom would help the inspectors find the hidden weapons sites.

3.
Towards the end of the week, I will try and persuade President Bush to allow you access to certain classified data as a demonstration that effective UN pressure on the White House brings results.

December 20: From Powell to Blix;

09:45 EST: URGENT. What's going on? My staff tells me you went on BBC4 radio and complained that you and the UN inspectors do not command resources like the Americans for finding out what the Iraqis are up to - intelligence, satellites and, did I hear correctly? - spies? I happened to be with the President at that moment and saw him blow up: I had to keep on telling him that you would never use that word again. Let's be absolutely clear on the differences between us: We practice intelligence; spies are what the UN runs!

Your gaffe was major and had instant repercussions. The President picked it up there and then and ordered me to go before the media and state clearly that Baghdad is in material breach of 1441. We all know what that means. It means that the plans I worked on with Kofi Annan to get the war put off till the end of 2003 have gone up in smoke. Whether we like it or not, your report will have to be presented in the first week of January, in time for war to be launched in the second half of the month.

Here's what happens next. You will gladly accept the intelligence data we hand you, mostly satellite photographs, and take it back with you to Baghdad to help with resumed inspections. However, the photos will be as outdated as the Iraqi document - nothing after 1998. Ten days later, in the first week of January, you will return to New York and announce the Iraqis are not cooperating and are therefore in breach of 1441. FYI, the war will start, with or without your report, on January 16.

December 21: Blix to Powell:

URGENT. Could you not let us have just one or two shots dated 2002 or even 2001?

December 21: Powell to Blix:

What are you talking about? You know we don't have any new photographs. And we both know where the Iraqis have really hidden their nuclear, chemical and biological materials - in bunkers under their hospitals and schools.

P.S. I almost forgot, Rumsfeld asked me to tell you that the Iraqis have just planted around Baghdad and Tirkit whole forests of millions of sharp metal spikes, some as high as 15 cm., to stop us dropping our troops around the two cities. Some of our informants suggest the spikes may be contaminated with lethal chemicals. So when you get back to Baghdad, please see if some of your men can't sneak through to collect a spike or two and post it to New York.

22 December: Little attention has been paid to the pandemic factor inherent in biological warfare - and its potential for mass population shifts - especially in the Middle East, given the medical, social and economic conditions prevailing in the region. These conditions appear to have persuaded the Iraqi ruler that he holds an unanswerable deterrent. Israel is known to be one of his targets of choice, which is why Washington has undertaken to protect the country against Iraqi reprisal for a US assault on Baghdad.

Christine Gosden, head of Medical Genetics at Liverpool University in northwest England, says that 14 years after Saddam's biological and chemical attacks on Halabjah, its inhabitants are prone to cancer, respiratory disorders, skin rashes and birth defects. Iraq's genocidal bio-war agents, such as rotavirus, which only kills infants and children, still cause deaths today.

And today, the threat of Iraq again resorting to bio-engineered weapons raises an even broader pandemic peril. Israel has the medical facilities and sanitary conditions to contain an epidemic of smallpox or a similar bio-warfare agent. Not so its neighbors. Furthermore, the movement of oil from and through the Middle East out to Western countries would carry the contamination far and wide. West Bank Palestinians fleeing from contamination by an Iraqi biological attack aimed at Israel, but spreading to their centers, would bring the infection to surrounding countries like Jordan, Syria, Egypt, or even Iran. All the vehicles heading out of the region would carry the contamination with them. Smuggled goods across the borders would have the same effect.

DEBKAfile's military source report that in late November, Jordan deployed military units along its frontier with Israel and the West Bank to forestall any such an exodus.

US war planners are taking into account potential war-inducted major population shifts in the Middle East of minorities in flight from war zones or those taking the opportunity to seek greener pastures.

The most dangerous threat comes from the 2-4 million visitors from around the world who make the annual the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina from some 70 countries on all five continents. For Saddam Hussein and fanatical terrorist groups like al Qaeda, there is no more perfect breeding ground for turning outbreaks of smallpox or anthrax into a world pandemic when millions head for home carrying the blight with them.

The outcome could well be plague and population movements on the scale of the Middle Ages.

25 December: The conference held in Turkey on Tuesday, December 24, between Israel's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon and Turkish army chief Gen. Hilimi Ozkok, wrapped up the arrangements made by the US, Israel and Turkey for concerted action in the approaching war with Iraq. The operations of their air and missile defenses, as well as their air and naval forces, will be closely synchronized under arrangements that have also made provision against Syria and the Hizballah joining the conflict.

A second key visitor to Turkey Tuesday was Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, whose Patriotic Union of Kurdistan-PUK fighters have been fighting tooth and nail in the past two weeks to fend off the bid by a pro-Saddam force made up of fundamentalist Kurdish Ansar al Islam, al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence officers, for control of the Halabjah region in northeast Iraq.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that Wednesday, December 25, Talabani is to be joined in Turkey by his former rival and fellow chief of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party-KDP. Together with Turkish political and military leaders and US representatives, they will try and hammer out an historic Turkish-Kurdish accord based on a text drafted in Washington.

Its key elements are:

A.
The Kurdish autonomous government of northern Iraq will grant 70,000 Turkish troops of the 2nd and 3rd Corps free passage through its territory for the Turkish push towards the big northern Iraqi oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

B.
While transiting this enclave, Turkish troops will show every respect for Kurdish autonomy, thereby also conferring tacit recognition on the part of Ankara.

C.
The Turkish contingents will seize control of the two oil cities with the support of Iraqi ethnic Turkoman units, who will be said to have risen up against Saddam Hussein's domination of their region. For the moment, the Kurds will not press claims to Iraqi oilfields.

D.
Turkey will then proceed to create an autonomous Turkoman entity stretching from northern to central Iraq up to the approaches to Baghdad.

E.
The United States and Turkey will foster political, defensive and economic cooperation between the Kurdish and Turkoman self-governing provinces and guarantee their security. This clause indicates that a portion of North Iraq's oil revenues will be channeled to the Kurdish province.

According to DEBKAfile's military sources, the successful outcome of the three-way parley on this document will open the way for a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq without waiting for the American offensive to begin on other fronts. Gen. Yaalon's trip to Turkey was intended to buttress the western flank of the Turkish military operation. The Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's disclosure in a Channel Two TV interview Tuesday night, December 24, of information that Iraq is hiding some of its chemical and biological weapons in Syria to keep them from UN inspectors - in keeping with the 2002 secret Syrian-Iraqi military pact - was intended as a hands-off warning to Damascus against interfering with the Turkish advance into Iraq.

27 December: Sharon's main pursuit these days, according to DEBKAfile's American and Palestinian sources, is a hush-hush, informal discourse with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the outline of a peace accord for creating a Palestinian state and shaping Israel's final borders.

This settlement would be part and parcel of the Bush administration's moves on Iraq and their regional corollary and is based on the US President's Middle East blueprint of June 25.

The exchanges between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian leader are being carried back and forth by Arafat's unofficial deputy, veteran PLO diplomat Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen.

Last week, President George W. Bush asked the Middle East Quartet to delay presentation of their "road map", hoping the secret Sharon-Arab channel would yield positive results.

What is the Israeli prime minister offering? DEBKAfile's sources reveal some highlights:

1.
A Palestinian state consisting of West Bank Areas A and B. Israel would keep as sovereign territory Areas C plus around 10 percent of the land as well as the Jordan Rift Valley. The Palestinian state would thus rise on little more than 50 percent of the West Bank, leaving Israel just short of half.

2.
Israel would likewise retain control of the main latitudinal highways running through the West Bank from the Israeli border in the West to the Jordan River in the East.

3.
All the West Bank settlements, like the Jewish communities along these routes would remain in place under Israeli sovereignty.

4.
A second road network would be tunneled underground at right angles to the first, providing territorial continuity between Palestinian locations under full Palestinian authority

5.
This peace settlement would be implemented over 10 years. It would be contingent on the Palestinians calling off in the first stage all terrorist activity against Israel, disbanding the militias engaged in terror - including the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami and expunging all forms of anti-Israel agitation and incitement from Palestinian education programs and mass media.

6.
Jerusalem is not under discussion. As far as Sharon is concerned Jerusalem's fate is non-negotiable and the city will continue to be the undivided capital of Israel.

Bush and Sharon both seem to believe that this secret interchange can end positively, encouraged by the fact that Arafat sent Abu Mazen back with proposals of his own. They are:

1.
The Palestinians must have 65 percent of the West Bank.

2.
The West Bank's lateral routes must also come under Palestinian sovereignty, but may be leased out to Israel for 25 years together with the roadside settlements.

3.
The transitional period must be cut down from ten to two years.

4.
Like Sharon, Arafat has not raised the Jerusalem issue. Abu Mazen is working on a compromise formula for transferring Temple Mount and some of Jerusalem's Arab districts to Jordanian control. A joint Palestinian-Jordanian authority would be set up as a formality.

Despite the winds of hope blowing in Washington and Jerusalem, DEBKAfile's Palestinian experts say that, outside the secret diplomatic interchange between Sharon and Arafat, nothing has changed in Israel-Palestinian relations. The new defense minister and chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz and Lt. General Moshe Yaalon, are conducting an intense crackdown against the spreading blight of suicidal terror - and especially to forestall the opening up of a second front when America goes to war in Iraq - with initial results. So far in December, three Israelis have died in terrorist attacks compared with 44 in November and 22 in October.

Nonetheless, Arafat and his clique believe Saddam Hussein will come out on top of the conflict with the Americans and that his confrontation with Israel will likewise end in victory.

As long as he cherishes that belief, our experts do not believe the Palestinian leader will sign or endorse any settlement - certainly not one on the minimalist lines offered by Sharon.

29 December: DEBKAfile's intelligence and military sources report that Saturday, December 21 - or Sunday, December 22 - directly after his visit to London, Syrian president Bashar Assad traveled again - this time to a secret rendezvous with Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

He brought with him President George W. Bush's final ultimatum to the Iraqi ruler, delivered into his hands by British premier Tony Blair.

According to sources familiar with this latest gambit, the Bush ultimatum consists of nine main points:

A.
Saddam is given a last chance to voluntarily give up his weapons of mass destruction and avert a military showdown with the United States.

B.
He must deliver a full, factual and public account of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in his possession, together with a solemn undertaking to hand the forbidden arms over to the UN arms inspectors within two weeks.

C.
In return, the United States promises to suspend military preparations for war on Iraq, also -

D.
not to treat the Iraqi president's statement as a casus belli.

E.
The United States will guarantee Saddam's orderly retirement from office and the transfer of power to a new regime

F.
With the handover of Iraq's forbidden arsenal to the UN inspectors, the United States will grant Saddam Hussein and his family safe passage to the destination of their choice in an Arab country.

G.
As a token of good faith, the United States postpones until January 1, the dispatch of half the ground, air and naval forces assigned to the war against Iraq - some 50,000 combat troops - to join the strength already posted in the region.

H.
The United States does not expect a reply to its ultimatum; nor will it enter into direct or indirect negotiation on its terms. Saddam can take it or leave it.

I.
If those terms are not met by New Year's Day, the United States will order the next batch of fighting men to leave for their war stations in the Persian Gulf. The US campaign on Iraq will be deemed to have been launched.

The Syrian ruler came away from his meeting with Saddam without a reply. However, this week, the Iraqi ruler was unusually forthcoming on the UN inspectors' requirements. Certain rare concessions appeared to signal his willingness to consider Washington's terms seriously:

1.
One or more of the Iraqi scientists interviewed by UN arms inspectors were allowed to drop hints about a secret Iraqi nuclear project.

2.
On Saturday, December 27, Iraq submitted to the inspectors a surprisingly long list - 500 names - of Iraqi scientists employed on missile development and in nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs.

3.
Construction work has speeded up on the compound that has become known as "Saddam City" in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

According to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, five vast mansions are under construction in the northern suburbs of Tripoli.

Furthermore, Gulf sources close to Iraqi military intelligence, are again reporting pressure on Saddam from some Arab quarters to step down and go into exile.

On this subject, two views are reported current in Washington by DEBKAfile's sources: One, that Saddam has no intention of bowing to the American ultimatum and is generating an atmosphere of compliance to buy time enough to gain himself a free hand.

30 December: The powerful blast that reverberated across eastern and central Lebanon Sunday, December 29, was caused by the explosion of a big surface missile in Hizballah hands and of Iraqi origin. Reporting this, DEBKAfile's exclusive military and Lebanese sources reveal that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has recently taken delivery of a shipment of surface missiles, presumed to be medium-range, from the Iraqi army. The blast occurred at a Hizballah training camp near a village called Janta in the northeastern section of the Beqaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. This camp is also used by the group as a testing ground for new weapons, short range missiles and explosive devices. The blast was heard at a distance of 20 km indicating a warhead of one ton at least.

According to our sources, the missile exploded suddenly, catching the Hizballah team handling it unawares and causing a large number of casualties, as indicated by the long line of ambulances and rescue teams reported by witnesses to be racing to the blast scene from northern and central Lebanon. Among them were Syrian military rescue vehicles.

Military sources consulted by DEBKAfile ascribe the missile explosion to three possible causes:

A.
One of the recently delivered Iraqi missiles exploded accidentally while being unpacked and stowed in an underground bunker by Hizballah teams.

B.
One of the missiles was set up for launching against Israel and exploded prematurely. For the Hizballah, shooting even one missile into northern Israel would have gained the group enormous prestige in its Arab and Muslim milieu.
Our Lebanese sources report that the Iraqi ruler, Saddam Hussein, is leaning hard on the Hizballah secretary general, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, to open a warfront against Israel in the hope of easing US military pressure on Iraq.

C.
The Hizballah was setting the missile up for a practice launch when it blew up. This is unlikely as the Beqaa Valley is not the logical place for testing medium or long range missiles.

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