UN finds infraction

The U.N. inspectors swarming over Iraq's missile industry found an infraction last week: The short-range Al Samoud 2 sometimes flies a few miles farther than allowed. But the experts have reported no sign of any longer-range missiles that could strike Israel or neighboring oil nations as Washington fears.\nIn fact, after three months' intensive work, the U.N. teams are looking ahead to ending their current investigative phase, and moving on to long-term monitoring via electronic "eyes and ears." Such a system could rein in missile development for years, experts say.\nChief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix gave Iraq until Saturday to begin destroying the Al Samouds, and Baghdad was reported Thursday to have agreed in principle to go ahead with their elimination -- via explosives, crushing, cutting or other means.\nBlix called it an important test of Iraq's cooperation with U.N. disarmament efforts. The Iraqis must also eliminate the design data and equipment to build the weapons -- a damaging blow to their young missile industry.\nUnder the U.N. arms control regime that followed the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was forbidden to have missiles that could travel beyond a 150-kilometer range -- 93 miles. That's considered the outer limit of short-range or "battlefield" missiles.\nBlix reported the newly developed Al Samoud 2 exceeded that limit on 13 test flights, by no more than 20 miles. On 27 of 40 flights, the missile tested short of the permitted threshold, Blix told U.N. diplomats behind closed doors.\nThe Al Samouds' technical violation "isn't particularly worrisome ... isn't dramatic," said Victor Mizin, a former missile inspector in Iraq.\nHe said he saw Blix's ban, announced last week, "more as a political move" -- to assert U.N. control in Baghdad at a time when the Bush administration, threatening war against Iraq, contends U.N. inspections are ineffective.\nThe Iraqis protested the ban, contending the flights would come up shorter when missiles were fully loaded with warheads and guidance systems.\n"They have a point," said Aaron Karp, a missile proliferation expert at Virginia's Old Dominion University. "I'm sure there's a heavy version and a light version."\n"All missile experts will tell you it's very difficult to precisely find the range," said Mizin, a Russian former arms negotiations adviser who served three tours as an Iraq inspector. "It depends on how it's launched, the flight profile. There are all kinds of trade-offs between payload and actual range."\nThe slender white Al Samoud is not part of some hidden Iraqi arms program. It was under U.N. scrutiny from its first rollout, in 1997, when inspectors probed and tested it with gauges and scales to check its capabilities.