The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Sydney - Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, but kept up the appearance that it had them to deter a military attack. In an interview with an Australian radio station broadcast Wednesday, Blix said it was unlikely that the U.S and British teams now searching for weapons in Iraq would find more than some "documents of interest." Blix, who spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said Iraq might have tried to fool the United States into believing it had weapons of mass destruction over the years in order to deter attack. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, Beware of the Dog, without having a dog," he said from his home in Sweden. Baghdad - In an audiotape broadcast Wednesday, a speaker purporting to be Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to escalate attacks on Americans and called on U.S. and other coalition forces to leave the country "as soon as possible and without any conditions." The speaker, who sounded like the deposed Iraqi president, also urged America's international partners not to "fall prey in the traps of American foreign policy" and reject any plan for Iraq that legitimizes military occupation. He called on coalition leaders to withdraw their armies.
