News-Info-Alerts

Re: Iraq Insists Offer Serious

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 28, 2002

"Iraq Insists Offer on Missing U.S. Pilot Is Serious

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq insisted Wednesday its offer to receive a U.S. team to investigate the fate of an American pilot shot down during the 1991 Gulf War was serious, after Washington dismissed the move as propaganda.

An Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman urged the United States to accept Baghdad's offer to probe the fate of Lt. Commander Michael Speicher, shot down over Iraq on the first day of the war.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Monday dismissed the offer as "propaganda."

But the Iraqi spokesman said: "Iraq's initiative to receive an American team to probe the fate of Speicher is serious and it does not make it for propaganda."

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry officially notified the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on March 26 of its "readiness to receive a U.S. team and to take all measures necessary to implement this initiative," the spokesman said.

"If the United States is serious in its quest to know the fate of the American pilot after dropping his file for long years, it should notify the ICRC its acceptance of the Iraqi offer," he said.

The case has resurfaced amid U.S. threats to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as part of its "war on terror" and United Nations attempts to broker a return of arms inspectors to Iraq.

A U.S. military team searched for the pilot's remains in 1995 but their mission apparently ended inconclusively.

Rumsfeld said Iraq had made no offer to host a new U.S. delegation through formal channels and appeared to downplay recent reports that Speicher might be alive.

The Washington Times newspaper said earlier this month U.S. intelligence agencies had obtained new information indicating Speicher was in captivity in Iraq.

Washington listed Speicher as the war's first casualty but took the unusual step in January last year of reclassifying him as "missing in action" after evidence emerged he might have survived the crash. Iraq said then that he was dead.

Defense officials said U.S. spy satellites detected what they called a "man-made symbol" at the crash site more than three years after Speicher went missing. They said a flight suit that could have been Speicher's was found more recently on the surface of the desert.

The United States has labeled Iraq part of an "axis of evil" along with North Korea and Iran and warned Baghdad it could become a target if it does not let U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country to verify it is not holding weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq, which has barred inspectors since they left in December 1988, says it has destroyed all such weapons. "