WASHINGTON March 22 —
U.S. special operations troops combing Iraq for Scud missiles and
chemical or biological weapons have found none so far, a senior
American military officer said Saturday.
Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the vice director of operations for
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference that the
Iraqis have not fired any Scuds and that U.S. forces searching
airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no
missiles or launchers.
Iraq denies having any Scuds, which have sufficient range to
reach Israel, but Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the war, said
Saturday that Iraq has yet to account for about two dozen Scuds that
United Nations inspectors have said were left over from the 1991
Gulf War.
Iraq also denies it holds any chemical or biological weapons.
McChrystal said the United States will either bomb any such weapons
it should find or seize them with ground forces, whichever is safer.
He and other officials refused to say where in Iraq those searches
are happening.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military abandoned plans to open a
northern front against Iraq that would have sent heavy armored
forces streaming across the Turkish border.
Two U.S. defense officials said dozens of U.S. ships carrying
weaponry for the Army's 4th Infantry Division will head to the
Persian Gulf after weeks of waiting off Turkey's coast while the two
countries tried to reach a deal.
McChrystal said that even without the 4th Infantry, "there will
be a northern option." He would not say what that might be. Other
officials said Army airborne troops might join small numbers of U.S.
special operations forces already on the ground in northern Iraq,
where American officials fear clashes between Turkish forces and
Iraqi Kurds.
Although U.S. officials on Friday said all 8,000 soldiers in
Iraq's 51st Mechanized Division in southern Iraq has surrendered,
McChrystal said Saturday that only the unit's commanders gave
themselves up. The rest simply left the battlefield or were "melting
away," he said.
McChrystal said the number of Iraqi prisoners of war was between
1,000 and 2,000.
In describing overall progress in the war, McChrystal said
American and British forces have hit Iraq with 500 cruise missiles
and several hundred precision-guided bombs over the past day.
Warplanes flew 1,000 missions from aircraft carriers and air
bases in the region, he said.
Iraqi soldiers, "including some leadership," are surrendering and
defecting in large numbers, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke
said.
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed
and its threat to the region ... is ended," she said.
Northern Iraq is an important battleground because of the Kurdish
presence in enclaves not controlled by the Iraqi government. Turkey
fears the Kurds will seize the northern oil fields or establish an
independent state, thus complicating Turkey's conflict with its own
Kurdish minority.
The Pentagon wanted to put a heavy armored force into northern
Iraq and had designated the 4th Infantry for that mission. The only
feasible avenue for them to reach northern Iraq was from bases in
Turkey, an option foreclosed by the Turkish government.
With U.S. ground forces advancing toward Baghdad, Pentagon
officials expressed concerns the troops might come across Republican
Guard troops armed with chemical weapons.
"We would be hopeful that those with their triggers on these
weapons understand what Secretary Don Rumsfeld said in his comments
yesterday: `Don't use it. Don't use it,'" Franks, the top U.S. war
commander, said Saturday at a news conference at his Persian Gulf
command post.
The administration had once believed it could count on NATO ally
Turkey to support the creation of a northern front against Iraq. But
after weeks of wrangling over financial compensation and
arrangements for Turkish forces to join the Americans in northern
Iraq, the Pentagon has given up.
The Turkish military on Saturday denied reports that 1,000 of its
commandos had crossed into northern Iraq. On Friday a military
official had said soldiers in armored personnel carriers rolled into
northeastern Iraq near where the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran
converge.
But on Saturday that was denied, and Pentagon officials said they
saw no sign of a Turkish incursion.
About 40 ships carrying the 4th Infantry Division's weaponry and
equipment were to begin moving through the Suez Canal on Sunday,
said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 4th Infantry's soldiers, who remained at Fort Hood, Texas,
after their weaponry and equipment went to the Mediterranean last
month, are likely to go to Kuwait, the officials said.
The redirected cargo ships are to begin arriving off the coast of
Kuwait about March 30, one official said. All the ships would arrive
by about April 10.
From Kuwait they could move into Iraq to serve as reinforcements
if the ground war lasts more than several weeks, or as occupation
forces after the Iraqi government's collapse.
photo credit
and caption:
A member of 3 Regiment Army Air
Corps, serving with the British Army's 16 Air Assault Brigade,
keeps watch Sat. March 22, 2003, after securing the North
Ramala oilfield in Iraq. (AP Photo/Ian Jones,
Pool)
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