Ritter: Physically Impossible for Iraqis to
Manufacture Ballistic Missiles
Since '98
Aired September 1, 2000 - 8:31 a.m. ET

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The Pentagon has put a
patriot missile battery in
Germany on a heightened state of alert for possible
deployment to Israel.
The action is related to a possible or perceived,
threat to Israel from
Iraq. Iraq has ballistic missiles capable of reaching
Israel. Defense
officials claim to have no information regarding any
specific threat. Now
Iraq this morning has denied that there is anything to
the report of a
perceived or possible threat to Israel.

Joining us on the telephone from New York is Scott
Ritter. Mr. Ritter is a
former chief United Nations weapons inspector. He
spent lots of time in
Iraq checking out their capabilities.

Mr. Ritter, what do you make of this report this
morning?

SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well, as
-- I have to agree
totally with the Iraqis. There's absolutely no
substance to any accusation
that Iraq continues to possess a ballistic missile
capability that can
reach Israel. This is a fact that's well-known to the
United States and to
Israel. Prime Minister Barak has recently just said
that there is no Iraqi
missile threat. And he doesn't know what all the hype
is about. This seems
to be a purely political move on the part of the
United States to continue
to demonize Iraq by hyping it's perceived
capabilities.

HARRIS: But considering how long it's been since there
have been any
inspectors on the ground in Iraq, to check out first
hand what they have
and what they do not have, how can you be so sure
about all that?

RITTER: Well, when the inspectors left in December of
1998, they had under
their belts over four years' experience in monitoring
the totality of
Iraq's ballistic missile capabilities. As of December
1998, the Iraqi
ballistic missile capability was judged to be almost
nonexistent. What
they were working on didn't work. It was all under a
150 kilometers. And
there is no way in the intervening time, even though
weapons inspectors
have not been in Iraq, that Iraq could have
miraculously reconstituted a
ballistic missile production capability, let alone
field an operational
ballistic missile force. That's just physically
impossible.

HARRIS: It will be interesting to see how this plays
out. Scott Ritter, we
thank you very much for your time this morning, and
your insight.

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