Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 18, 1993 TAG: 9301180036
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK THOMPSON KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
U.S. MISSILES HIT IRAQI PLANT
The United States, angered over continued military provocations from Saddam Hussein, rained a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles on what it said was a nuclear site just outside Baghdad on Sunday night.In a remarkable conclusion to President Bush's last weekend as president, the renewed hostilities near Saddam's center of power won a quick endorsement from Bill Clinton.
"I fully support President Bush's action," Clinton said in a statement as his bus caravan wended its way from Monticello, Va., to the capital. "Saddam Hussein should be very clear in understanding that the current administration and the next administration are in complete agreement on the necessity of his fully complying with all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.
"We've been fully briefed. We've been in regular contact," Clinton said of the increase in tensions that put a shadow over his otherwise festive bus journey through the Virginia countryside to the nation's capital.
Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's press secretary, said the new administration not only supports Bush's action but is also "prepared to continue taking appropriate action until Iraq complies."
Continued Iraqi defiance of U.N. cease-fire conditions could trigger additional attacks in the next few days, said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. Bush, spending his final weekend as president at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., did not make a statement.
The missile attack came after several clashes between Iraq and allied forces during the day. A U.S. F-16 shot down an Iraqi fighter, and another U.S. warplane fired a radar-killing missile at an Iraqi radar site.
The volley of about 40 cruise missiles was launched from four U.S. warships hundreds of miles away in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. It triggered a storm of Iraqi anti-aircraft fire from Baghdad rooftops, broadcast worldwide by Cable News Network and eerily replicating the hellish view of a besieged greenish city that the world saw during the opening hours of the Persian Gulf War.
Fitzwater said the target was a "nuclear fabricating plant" eight miles southeast of Baghdad where components for Iraq's nuclear weapons program have been made.
Iraq said the site, consisting of dozens of buildings, was a mechanical engineering complex not involved in Iraq's atomic endeavors.
The plant has been dormant, according to International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman David Kyd, who said it was visited by inspectors in June 1991 and subsequently. He said it was "absolutely out of action."
However, a senior Pentagon official insisted that the site was "key" to the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Not all the buildings at the site were targeted, he added. He described it as a "multibillion-dollar facility" that used high-tech computers to manufacture components used in the uranium enrichment process for nuclear weapons.
"Our intent here was to do serious damage to the facility. . . . It is of high value to the Iraqi military," he said.
The strike delivered "the political and diplomatic point" that Iraq must comply with U.N. resolutions, Fitzwater said. "This was an appropriate target."
Bush spoke with British Prime Minister John Major, French President Francois Mitterrand and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney before the Tomahawk attack, according to Fitzwater. "We acted in concert with our allies," he said.
Fitzwater said the attack was carried out by missiles to ensure that no allied pilots were shot down by Iraq's increasingly aggressive air defenses.
Darkness prevented an immediate assessment of the success of the strike, which began at 10 p.m. Baghdad time, U.S. defense officials said.
An Iraqi doctor told the Reuters news agency that at least three people died and 30 were wounded in the Tomahawk attack.
A female hotel receptionist died when the Al Rasheed Hotel, one of the city's finest, was struck by what may have been a section of a wayward Tomahawk. Part of the lobby was destroyed.
Outside the Al-Rasheed, an Iraqi army photographer showed reporters a piece of metal he said he had picked up at the site, which bore the marking "Williams International, Jacksonville, Florida. Series 9039. N00019-89-c-0204."
Williams International Corp. makes the turbofan engine for the U.S. Navy's Tomahawk cruise missile, according to Jane's Weapons Systems.
In Washington, Fitzwater said he was aware of reports of damage to the Al-Rasheed, but questioned whether the explosion was caused by a cruise missile. He speculated an Iraqi anti-aircraft shell might have hit the hotel.
But many Iraqis at the hotel blamed the United States for the blast, which knocked people off their feet and ceilings to the floor.
A balding man in a disheveled suit who identified himself only as Youssef told The Associated Press: "We do not believe this was a mistake. We know how much George Bush hates our President Saddam."
The stage for renewed allied raids on Iraq was set late Saturday, when the United Nations dismissed Baghdad's offer to permit U.N. inspectors into Iraq as long as they avoided the southern no-fly zone.
On Sunday, Iraq offered to guarantee the safety of U.N. planes flying through the southern zone if the alliance halted all air operations in the zone during the flights. An allied official said the offer was "too little, too late."
Sunday, the United Nations formally rejected the second Iraqi offer.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said on ABC that Saddam "is determined to create a confrontation in the closing days of the Bush administration, to coincide with the anniversary of the end of the air war two years ago and the start of the new Clinton administration."
Cheney called the Iraqi leader a "pathetic creature" and said he could be mentally "unhinged" after 30 months of allied military and economic pressure.
Saddam, in a televised speech on the second anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf War, told Iraqis that "the aggressors will fail in their evil purposes." The Iraqi government proclaimed Sunday "Aggression Day" to mark the anniversary of the war's start.
The Tomahawk attack apparently involved no more explosive power than last Wednesday's restrained allied attack at several missile batteries and command posts in southern Iraq. Each Tomahawk carried a single 984-pound warhead.
Pentagon officials said the vessels in the Persian Gulf unleashing the barrage included the USS Cowpens, an Aegis-class cruiser, and two destroyers: the USS Hewit and the USS Stump. A third destroyer, the USS Caron, fired its missiles from the Red Sea.
The earlier clash that led to the downing of an Iraqi jet began about 2 a.m. EST Sunday when Iraqi anti-aircraft guns fired on two U.S. F-16s and three coalition warplanes patrolling northern Iraq.
A short time later, a U.S. F-4G "Wild Weasel" radar-killing plane struck the air-defense site with a HARM missile after the Iraqi outpost's radar "locked on" to the U.S. warplane. Within moments, the radar went dead, although Pentagon officials couldn't say if that was because the radar-homing missile found its mark or because the Iraqis simply turned the radar off to avoid being hit.
And at 4:38 a.m. EST, a U.S. F-16 fighter fired two AMRAAM missiles, destroying a "threatening" Soviet-made MiG, Fitzwater said. Pentagon officials said the plane was hit just inside the zone and crashed just south of it.
Thousands of Iraqis, escorted by brass bands and beating drums, marched through Baghdad chanting: "Whether Bush liked it or not, Saddam is staying forever."
The Iraqi government believes the no-fly zones imposed over broad swaths of its territory by the United States, Britain and France are illegal because they lack U.N. authority.
Saddam said that the United States is manipulating the United Nations and that the world body should be overhauled. "This way of dealing with countries will lead the people of countries to protect themselves by changing this organization in a radical manner," he said in a 90-minute speech.
He also reasserted Iraq's claim to Kuwait, saying people of both nations are "brothers in good times and bad times. . . . They are one nation."
Iraq's Sunday newspapers declared their loyalty to Saddam, who in recent days has grown increasingly defiant of the allies that forced him out of Kuwait and forced him to accept humiliating cease-fire terms.
Knight-Ridder staff writer Susan Bennett contributed to this report, as did the Associated Press.