News-Info-Alerts

Re: US, Iraq & Speicher - More News

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 13, 2002

"US to ask Iraq if it has new information on missing pilot
 
   
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked the State Department to ask Iraq if it has any new information in the case of a missing US Navy pilot that would warrant a meeting between US and Iraqi officials, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

Baghdad invited the United States in March to send a team of experts to Iraq following US charges that Lieutenant Commander Michael Spiecher probably survived the downing of his F/A-18 fighter during the 1991 Gulf War, and if so was almost certainly captured.

The offer, regarded warily by the Pentagon as Iraqi propaganda, was the subject of lengthy internal deliberations before Rumsfeld decided earlier this week to ask the Iraqis whether they had new information about the Speicher case, said Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

“We have sent a note to the State Department ... and asked them to send a diplomatic note through the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) to Iraq asking them if they have any new information to share on Speicher,” he said.

“Once Iraq responds, we'll go from there and decide if we will meet with them and where and when that will be,” he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that the State Department was “in touch through various means with Iraq about the case of Commander Speicher.”

“We are following every possible lead,” he said.

The US Navy took the unusual step in January of changing Speicher's status from “killed in action, body not recovered” to “missing in action” after an intelligence review concluded that he probably survived the loss of his aircraft on Jan. 17, 1991.

His F/A-18 crashed in the desert west of Baghdad, apparently after being hit by an Iraqi air-to-air missile.

A crash site believed to be Speicher's was excavated in 1995 by an ICRC team that included US Navy experts, who found that he had initiated the ejection sequence, jettisoned the canopy and likely ejected successfully from the aircraft.

Speicher “probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis,” the navy's latest assessment said.

It concluded that Baghdad could account for his fate but was concealing information.

His case has been kept alive by influential US lawmakers and the occasional unconfirmed report that Iraq is holding a US pilot.

Pentagon officials said they have no evidence he is alive.

“The idea is we need to pursue all avenues to resolve this,” Lapan said.

Friday-Saturday, July 12-13, 2002"