The United States and Britain last night launched the biggest air raid on targets around Baghdad since Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, damaging President Saddam Hussein's new command-and-control facilities and a high-tech air defence network developed with help from China and Serbia.

The bombing mission, which involved at least 80 aircraft, including 24 American strike planes such as F16s, and nine RAF aircraft, including six Tornado GR1s, was the first military attack to be authorised by President Bush since taking office last month. The American aircraft carrier, USS Harry S. Truman, launched raids with F14s and F18s from the Gulf.

The Ministry of Defence said that six sites, all part of the Iraqi integrated air defence system, had been hit, five of them outside the southern no-fly zone. "All aircraft returned safely. Initial reports are that weapons hit their targets successfully", it said. Early battle damage assessment using high-resolution cameras indicated that no civilian areas had been hit.

Threat
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said the attacks had been a "proportionate response" to the increased threat to the aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone. "Saddam Hussein should be clear that we will not tolerate continued attempts to endanger the lives of our aircrew", he said.

The decision to mount the raid was personally approved by Tony Blair who was involved in discussions from the beginning, according to military sources. It follows concerns raised by RAF commanders in Kuwait that pilots patrolling the no-fly zones were coming under growing risk of being shot down by Iraq's increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

Alarm bells began ringing more insistently in Washington and London after Saddam staged a display of military hardware in the New Year's Eve parade in Baghdad. Since the end of the Gulf war, Iraq has had a severely depleted stock of weapons. But after the parade American military analysts concluded that his inventory of SA-6 missile batteries had jumped to about 40.

American intelligence reports also showed that Iraqi anti-aircraft capabilities were about to be upgraded by underground fibre-optic cables linking radar and missile positions.

The system was imported from Iraq's ally, Serbia, under President Milosevic, and installed with help from the Chinese, according to Pentagon officials quoted in the Washington Post. One said the technicians developing the network were mostly civilians, but some officers of the People's Liberation Army were also involved.

Another explained that the strikes were timed to avoid any risk of hitting them, with planners determined to avoid a repeat of the diplomatic row over the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade during Nato's campaign to liberate Kosovo.

President Bush, on a visit to Mexico, said last night the action was taken to drive home to Saddam that he must abide by the agreement signed after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. "We're going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he develops weapons of mass destruction, and if we catch him doing so, we'll take the appropriate action", he declared.

Critical
Iraqi state television later claimed that a woman was killed in the raids, with eleven other people injured, some in a critical condition.

Yesterday's action came amid growing signs that the Iraqi dictator is once again stepping up his drive to threaten his neighbours and carve out a dominant role in the crucial strategic region of the Middle East.

Last month a military engineer, who fled Iraq a year after United Nations weapons inspectors left the country, said Saddam already has two fully operational nuclear bombs and is working to build several more. The defector, who is in hiding somewhere in Europe, said the weapons programme is being developed in a top-security compound in the north-east of the country. Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna are assessing his evidence.

In London, the Foreign Office has said it shares American fears that Iraq has rebuilt factories capable of producing chemical weapons. President Bush promised during his election campaign to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and "take 'em out". Since taking office he has received CIA briefings that America faces growing global uncertainty, with threats from Iraq and Iran top of the list of security concerns.

Appetite
Two weeks ago, George Tenet, the new head of the CIA, told members of Congress that "we are likely to see greater assertiveness" by Saddam over the next year as he attempted to wriggle free of UN sanctions and finance the rebuilding of his military. And last Sunday Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, gave a warning about the Iraqi dictator's "enormous appetite for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons".

British and American diplomats are also re-examining the sanctions regime, imposed after the Gulf War to prevent Saddam acquiring the means to replenish his germ or chemical arsenals, in parallel with the then UNSCOM inspection teams trying to locate his existing supplies.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, who is visiting the Middle East this weekend, indicated the Administration would seek to re-focus the sanctions to make them more effective against the Baghdad regime itself. "Containment has been a successful policy and I think we should make sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the agreements he made" at the end of the Gulf war, Mr Powell said.

President Clinton once vowed the sanctions would continue "until the end of time, or as long as he is there" — Washington's usually unstated 'Saddam clause' as a condition of Iraq's re-entry into the international community.
 

 

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Iraq's neighbours last night led criticism of American and British bombing of the country after state television said a raid on the outskirts of Baghdad had left one woman dead and 11 people wounded.

The bombing raid was aimed at anti-aircraft installations, following concerns raised by RAF commanders in Kuwait that pilots patrolling the no-fly zones were coming under growing risk of being shot down by Iraq's increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

The Ministry of Defence in London said that early battle damage assessment, using high-resolution cameras, suggested no civilian areas had been hit. "All aircraft returned safely. Initial reports are that weapons hit their targets successfully",it said. But a spokesman admitted it would be several days before a full appraisal could be concluded.

Iraqi youth television, run by President Saddam Hussein's son Uday, said at least three children were among civilian casualties, and showed footage from a hospital of the children as well as three women and two men, who had leg and stomach wounds. A health minister said some of the injured were in a critical condition.

Strikes
US President George W Bush, in Mexico on his first diplomatic mission since taking office, said the strikes were part of a strategy to contain what he called an Iraqi threat. "Saddam. must abide by the agreement signed after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. We're going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he develops weapons of mass destruction, and if we catch him doing so, we'll take the appropriate action",he declared.

There have been occasional suggestions from Britain and America that Iraq is in a position to threaten them directly. Intelligence sources have inspired several stories that unmanned drone aircraft are being adapted to carry germ warfare payloads, 'enough to wipe out' a major city in the West. But, according to Ken Munson of Jane's Defence Group, the plane in question, an M18 Dromeda, has a range of some three hundred miles, and there has been no claim that Iraq possesses long-range ballistic missile capability.

Of the countries within reach of Iraqi firepower, Iran,which fought for eight years to repulse an invasion by its neighbour in 1980 and suffered several attacks with chemical weapons, complained that the bombing was counter-productive to regional security. Official Tehran radio said:"This surprise attack adds to the growing violence in the Middle East. Bush is trying to demonstrate his strength against Saddam Hussein".

Concerns
Saudi Arabia, base for the American aircraft which carried out the raid, was another to raise concerns over the likely effectiveness of the US/UK approach. It was partly to guard against a supposed threat to Saudi Arabia that the Gulf War was fought, after Pentagon claims — later renounced as mistaken - that Iraqi troops were massing in then-occupied Kuwait on the border with Saudi territory.

But Prince Saud al-Faisal, the country's foreign minister, said last night that the "recent escalation against south Baghdad" raised "feelings of denunciation and anxiety".

London and Washington said the bombing of locations on the outskirts of the capital came in response to an increasing number of near misses by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire, targeting their pilots. Britain and America have flown patrols over the no-fly zones since 1991. The UN has never explicitly approved them, but one resolution mandates member states to do whatever they can to protect Iraqis from internal repression by the regime.

America accused China of supplying civilian and military technicians to instal high-tech air defences, with a fibre-optic cable network connecting radar installations with surface-to-air missile batteries. Beijing reacted by dismissing the allegation as an attempt to distract attention from the bombing.

British defence sources said the system had been supplied by Serbia, but cooperation from Belgrade had ceased with the election of President Vojislav Kostunica and popular uprising which swept him to power, leaving the Chinese to carry out the task of installation.

The Ministry of Defence said that six sites, all part of this new integrated air defence system, had been hit, five of them outside the southern no-fly zone. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said the attacks had been a "proportionate response" to the increased threat to British and American aircraft. "Saddam Hussein should be clear that we will not tolerate continued attempts to endanger the lives of our aircrew", he said.

But other permanent members of the UN Security Council criticised the strikes. Russian President Vladimir Putin called them "counter-productive for the process of a political settlement".

Pointless
The French Foreign Minister, Hubert Vedrine, said the exercise was pointless and lacking "any legal international basis" as it was not UN-approved. "We are looking to the new American administration to redefine its Iraqi policy because at the moment it is clearly not working".

The Bush administration had promised to develop a new policy, tougher on security but gentler on the Iraqi civilian population, Mr Vedrine said. "What they have just done is neither the one nor the other".

Concern over Iraq's chemical, biological and possible nuclear weapons programmes is not confined to the Bush White House, however. Shahram Chubin, of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, believe Iraq is driven partly by historical fear of its larger neighbour, Iran and partly by Saddam Hussein's ambitions to lead the Arab world in confrontation with Israel.

The lessons for Baghdad of the last decade included "first, that only nuclear weapons will deter a future humiliation like the one suffered in 1991, and, second, that nuclear weapons may be the only way to deter an Israeli [nuclear] attack".

Dr Chubin was contributing to a paper published by the International Commission for Security and Cooperation in West Asia, which has representatives from Iraq, Iran, the Gulf Cooperation Council states led by the Saudis as well as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The British member is Lord Frank Judd of Portsea.

Experts with the Commission have called for the Middle East to be established as a 'weapons-of-mass-destruction-free-zone',an ideal to which all states in the region have committed in principle at some time or other, and one which is set out in article 14 of UN Resolution 687, the ceasefire terms of the 1991 Gulf War.

Some analysts believe a re-think of sanctions is needed, as a way of providing for the long-term social and political changes necessary to build trust and confidence among Iraq's neighbours. Faleh Abdul Jabbar, an Iraqi sociologist based at London's Birkbeck College, said the no-fly zones had succeeded in protecting three million Kurds, but other elements of sanctions had merely strengthened the regime.

The oil-for-food programme had increased Iraqi people's dependency on the state:"Iraq is a command economy, we don't have any separation of the economy from politics -that's why the people are dependent on the state for their livelihood. Now they are dependent on the state for their daily provisions".
 
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