Al-Quds
al-Arabi
London, Thursday, 28 November 2002.
Eric Mueller
comments:
WE TRANSLATE here the first
paragraphs of today's front page
story from Al-Quds
al-Arabi, a popular,
independent Arabic-language paper
issued in London. The article
went on to discuss the UN weapons
inspections with the same basic
information that appeared in
western accounts.
Though western dispatches
mention the air-raid sirens, I
didn't find any that speculated
on the identity or purpose of the
mystery aircraft that set them
off.
As has been noted, however,
nobody is willing to claim the
plane, and this in itself must
arouse suspicion..
Arabist Eric Mueller is
this website's expert on Middle
Eastern affairs.
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Spy
Plane in Baghdad Skies sets off the Sirens
of War
Baghdad,
London: al-Quds al-Arabi. --
For several minutes the
residents of Baghdad thought yesterday
that war had broken out when air raid
sirens went off after the appearance of an
unknown airplane flying at a high altitude
in the skies over their city. It left
behind a white trail before
disappearing.
Iraqi anti-aircraft quickly targeted
the plane. The Pentagon, however, denied
that the plane was American. A spokesman
for the UN inspectors also denied that the
aircraft belonged to UNMOVIC, the
inspection committee that officially began
its work in Iraq yesterday. Military
sources did not exclude the possibility
that the airplane might be a craft
specially designed for spying and aerial
surveys, and that it was of the same type
that appeared in the skies over Kabul
before the beginning of the war against
Afghanistan last year.
The military
sources said that that type of aircraft
is designed to monitor communications
and to take pictures that have a high
capacity for enlargement. These provide
a gold mine of intelligence information
at the stage of primary preparation for
war.
Air raid sirens went off in the Iraqi
capital city at about 9:30 a.m. yesterday
(Wednesday, 06:30 GMT) after an unknown
airplane appeared high in the sky. The
sirens stopped about ten minutes after
they went off.
Iraqi citizens saw a white trail about
100 meters in length to the west of
Baghdad that was left by the airplane as
it appeared to fly over an area being
searched by the United Nations weapons
inspectors yesterday morning (Wednesday,
27 November 2002.)
As regards the inspections themselves,
Iraq successfully passed its first test
yesterday. A United Nations spokesman
declared in Baghdad that the UN inspectors
completed their preliminary inspection
work Wednesday without difficulty in two
areas adjacent to Baghdad on the first day
of their resumed mission.
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