U.S. officials at the United Nations gave diplomats a high-tech slide show Wednesday of satellite photos that they say prove Iraqis have illegally converted recently imported trucks to weapons carriers.
The unusual U.S. intelligence briefings were staged on the eve of the first high-level talks between Iraqi and U.N. officials in almost two years.
In a visit that diplomats say was prompted by U.S. threats of military action against his government, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri is scheduled to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York Thursday before flying back to the Middle East for a round of consultations in Arab capitals.
Although Iraq requested the meeting, U.N. officials say Annan set the agenda: full Iraqi compliance with U.N. demands for the return of weapons inspectors, who left Baghdad hours before U.S. and British bombing raids there in December 1998.
\As far as the secretary-general is concerned, they will be talking about U.N. resolutions, and his emphasis will be implementation, implementation, implementation,"" said Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman.
The U.S. government says the spy photos it unveiled behind closed doors Wednesday document Iraq's brazen violation of the U.N. resolution that established the so-called oil-for-food program, under which Iraq can import industrial goods such as heavy trucks only for ""humanitarian' purposes.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces and their Afghan allies engaged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in fierce close combat in the hills and mountains of eastern Afghanistan Wednesday as both sides poured in reinforcements for the largest ground battle of the war.
Army Maj. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, the commander of U.S. forces in the five-day U.S. offensive, said American troops, fighting in snow-covered mountains as high as 10,000 feet, had killed ""several hundred"" al Qaeda and Taliban fighters over the last day.
Hagenbeck said the United States had gained the upper hand in the battle after an early setback and initial round of casualties in which eight U.S. troops were killed.
""We truly have the momentum at this point,"" he said. ""We own the dominant terrain in the area.""
The United States has brought in an additional 200 to 300 troops, boosting its ground presence to more than 1,000 troops in the 60-square-mile area south of the eastern Afghan city of Gardez where U.S. forces are attacking al Qaeda positions. The United States also added 12 additional Apache helicopter gunships to the battle on the heels of five Marine Cobra attack helicopters that were brought in on Tuesday.
Hagenbeck, speaking to reporters from the U.S. base in Bagram, about 35 miles north of Kabul, said two Apaches were hit by rocket-propelled grenades, one ""right in the nose cone.\
