Iraqi weapons declaration in U.N. hands

A report on Iraq's weapons programs was delivered to the United Nations in New York on Sunday. Iraq says the document, which is nearly 12,000 pages long, proves the Gulf nation has no illegal weapons. Iraq was required to submit the report as part of the latest U.N. resolution on the country -- the resolution that also cleared the way for U.N. inspectors to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. intelligence officials expressed skepticism about the report, saying the U.S. has "clear evidence" that Iraq has an extensive weapons program. Their reaction indicated that the White House does not think Iraq has come clean in the document. But a top Iraqi official says the report is as accurate as the U.N. resolution demanded. And Iraqi officials challenged the U.N. to prove that the report is false. "If they have anything to the contrary, let them forthwith come up with it," said General Amer al-Saadi, the Iraqi government's science adviser.

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The report is supposed to give a detailed account of Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs and its long-range missile programs -- both before and after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The report includes 12 CD-ROMs with 529 megabytes of information. Arabic translators have been called to the United Nations to translate some of the documents immediately.

President Bush did not talk about the report publicly on Sunday. But Senator Bob Graham, co-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that if the document implies that Iraq has no illegal weapons, it "is not truthful." A White House official threatened that if the declaration is found to include false information (or if it is missing information), it may constitute a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution. And President Bush has repeatedly said that the U.S. will not tolerate any material breaches by Iraq.

However, U.S. officials say that even if the Iraqi document on its weapons programs is false, it will not trigger war. One official added that it would take more time and more obstructionism, or interference, from Iraq before war would become imminent. An example of such interference might include Iraqi resistance to the U.N. weapons inspectors in the Gulf nation.

U.S. officials do not want U.N. inspectors to be trapped into a game with Iraq. Senator Joe Lieberman has cautioned that if officials allow Saddam Hussein to "go into some kind of rope-a-dope game with the U.N. inspectors, I fear that we will look back as we look back after September 11 and say to ourselves, why didn't we disarm him and get him out of power while we could?" His statement implies that the tough stance taken by the U.S. regarding Iraq is designed to prevent the Gulf nation from threatening other countries in the future.