UN weapons experts leave for Iraq
With the world watching, a team of United Nations arms inspectors was leaving for Baghdad today to again take up the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, amid complaints by the Iraqi government that the mission could give America a pretext for war.
A UN rear base on Cyprus was the jump-off point for the first working contingent of 18 specialists – six from the UN nuclear agency and 12 from the commission charged with searching for other weapons of mass destruction.
They were embarking on a crucial new round of inspections, after a four-year suspension, that could help set the future course of the troubled nation, and the future of peace in the Middle East. Their first Iraqi field mission is expected on Wednesday.
“You know, I think that what matters (is that) we are going to do our job seriously and ... draw conclusions which will be credible for everybody,” inspector Mark Baute said in Cyprus.
On the eve of their arrival, the Iraqi government released a letter from foreign minister Naji Sabri to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan protesting that parts of the UN resolution mandating the inspection mission could give Washington a pretext for attacking his country.
Sabri complained in particular that the resolution could turn “inaccurate statements (among) thousands of pages” of mandatory Iraqi reports into a supposed justification for military action.
“There is premeditation to target Iraq, whatever the pretext,” the foreign minister wrote.
The Iraqi complaints were not expected to interfere with resumption of the inspections. Iraq had accepted the resolution in a November 13 letter from Sabri to Annan.
In seven years’ work ending in 1998, UN experts destroyed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons and longer-range missiles forbidden to Iraq by UN resolutions after the Gulf War, in which an Iraqi invasion force was driven from Kuwait. The inspectors also dismantled Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme before it could build a bomb.
The inspections were finally suspended amid disputes over UN access to Iraqi sites and Iraqi complaints of American spying via the UN operation.
A new focus on Iraq by the US administration of President George Bush led to adoption of Resolution 1441 and the dispatch of inspectors back to Iraq with greater powers of unrestricted access to suspected weapons sites. Washington claims Iraq retains some prohibited weapons and may be producing others.
The UN Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously on November 7, demands that the Iraqis give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or face “serious consequences”.
The Bush administration threatens an invasion to enforce Iraqi disarmament, with or without UN sanction. Other governments say a decision to wage war on Iraq can be made only by the security council.
The resolution requires Iraq to submit an accounting by December 8 of its weapons programmes, as well of chemical, biological and nuclear programmes it claims are peaceful.
Any ”false statements or omissions” in that declaration could contribute to a finding that it had committed a “material breach” of the resolution, a finding that might lead to military action.
Sabri’s letter, dated Saturday, complained that this key passage was unjust, “because it considers the giving of inaccurate statements – taking into consideration that there are thousands of pages to be presented in those statements – is a material breach.”
Sabri wrote that the aim was clear – “to provide pretexts ... to be used in aggressive acts against Iraq”.
After talks with the Iraqis last week, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said they had expressed “particular concern” about what was expected of them in reporting on their chemical industry, a complex area in which many toxic products can be diverted to military use.
The foreign minister’s letter also disputed the allegations that his government retained chemical or biological weapons and rebuilt weapons programmes. “The United States and Britain failed to give one credible proof on this matter,” Sabri wrote.
He also complained of what he termed arbitrary powers granted to inspectors, including “meeting people inside their country without the presence of a representative of their government, or asking them to leave the country with their families to meet (for interviews) abroad”.
In notifying Annan of Iraq’s acceptance of Resolution 1441, Sabri had advised the UN chief he would follow with this second letter commenting on supposed violations of international law and other problems with the resolution.
If the inspectors eventually certify that Iraq has co-operated fully with their disarmament work, UN resolutions call for the lifting of international economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The 300-plus UN inspectors include chemists, biologists, missile and ordnance experts and other specialists of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and engineers and physicists of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Between 80 and 100 will be working in Iraq at any one time.
Their first missions are expected to be visits to Iraqi sites previously inspected in the 1990s, where they will check on cameras and other monitoring equipment left behind in many cases by earlier inspectors.
