News-Info-Alerts

Re: Iraq on Speicher

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 24, 2002

The spin begins...From the Iraq News agency -

"Iraq ready to receive US team to discuss pilot's fate

Baghdad, March 25, INA

Iraq declares it is ready to receive an American team to discuss the fate of American pilot Michael Speicher who shot down over Iraq in the first day of the U.S-led aggression on Iraq in 1991.

In reply to the press statement released by U.S State Department on 11 March claiming that the U.S government raised the subject of Michael Speicher on December 2001 and changed his status from killed to missing, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman said "Iraq is ready to receive an American team to discuss the fate of American pilot Michael Speicher who shot down over Iraq in the first day of the U.S-led aggression in 1991."

In a statement to INA, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Head of the U.S delegation brought up this subject at the last meeting of the tripartite commission held in Geneva on 8 March, and President Bush himself repeated this subject in a press conference on 13 March. American pilot Michael Speicher shot down over Iraq in the first day of the U.S-led aggression on Iraq on 17 January 1991. Since then the U.S administration made big contradictions in dealing with Speicher's file. At the time American Defence Secretary, now, Vice-President Dick Cheney told reporters at the night of the event that Speicher died because his airplane was shot down. On May 1991 the American Navy approved reports on his death as there were no evidences on his survival. American TV channels quoted some sources in the U.S Navy as saying that a pilot in the airplane which accompanied Speicher's plane saw Speicher's plane exploding in the air and crashed to the earth and he did not see Speicher ejects and there were no help calls from him.

The spokesman added that since 1991 up to February 1995 the U.S administration did not raise the subject in the International Committee of the Red Cross or in the tripartite commission to discuss the subject of missings. When the U.S administration requested to discuss the fate of the pilot in 1995, Iraq agreed to receive an American delegation for this purpose, a 11-member technical American delegation arrived in Iraq on December 1995 and saw the crash site.

The inspection team UNSCOM-24 on December 17-19, 1991 searched the western region in Iraq where the plane was crashed. Head of the team Scott Ritter confessed that the U.S administration asked him to search for an American pilot's body, after searching, Ritter concluded that the remains were devoured by wolfs. In 1993, the inspection team UNSCOM-63 again inspected the same region by using helicopters equipped with sophisticated radars and they found nothing but the plane's wreckage, the spokesman said.

The spokesman added that on 12 January 2001 former American President Bill Clinton raised the subject of Speicher and changed his status from killed in military operations to missing. The U.S authorities offered a file on Speicher but the International Committee of the Red Cross refused to receive it for the period of submitting requests for inspection ended in 31July 1996.

"To prove our good will in this regard and to refute repeated American allegations against Iraq, we express readiness of concerned Iraqi parties to receive an American team to visit Iraq to probe into the U.S. pilot issue, the delegation should be accompanied by an American media team for coverage and documentation under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It must also include the former leader of the U.N weapons inspection team in Iraq, Scott Ritter."

The spokesman said that Iraq calls on the U.S administration to stop its policy of misinformation against this side or that. Iraq affirms that the best way for solving such questions is through specialized legal channels, the spokesman said."