IRAQ: U.N. Clinches Agreement on Inspections with Baghdad

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 24 1996 (IPS) - The Iraqi government has ended a two-week standoff with U.N. weapons inspectors by agreeing on a plan to allow further inspections of Iraq’s military arsenal.

Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) entrusted with verifying the scrapping of Iraq’s biological, chemical, long-range and nuclear weaponry, praised the agreement as “really a sacrifice” for Iraq.

Ekeus and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, in a joint statement signed Saturday, declared that Iraq would cooperate with UNSCOM to secure “immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access” to all suspected Iraqi weaponry sites. In return, UNSCOM promises that “it would operate with full respect for the legitimate security concerns of Iraq.”

The agreement thus lays to rest the dispute that arose on Jun 13, when Iraq barred an UNSCOM team from entering a suspected weapons site. Baghdad claimed the site was important to national security, and would be compromised if the UNSCOM team — which Iraq said contained two U.S. Army members — entered.

Since the standoff, both Iraq and UNSCOM have scrambled to find a formula that would placate Baghdad’s concerns over national sovereignty with the need to verify that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been scrapped. Only if the latter point is confirmed by UNSCOM can Iraq win the lifting of a U.N. embargo in effect since August 1990.

In practise, Ekeus said after returning from Baghdad Monday, Baghdad now will undertake several concrete steps to assure the United Nations that they are not concealing weapons data.

“Before the end of June, Iraq is to hand over complete descriptions of its weapons programmes,” Ekeus said of a plan of action which he and Aziz also signed. He added that Aziz also agreed to allow UNSCOM to conduct sensitive interviews with Iraqi officials, one of many investigative procedures which Baghdad has resisted at times.

Whether Iraq will fulfill its commitments is open to question. As Ekeus noted, Iraq has previously promised full disclosure of its weapons programme without delivering. Asked whether this time will be different, the UNSCOM chairman responded, “I doubt it.”

Similarly, Iraq has over the past five years alternately allowed or resisted UNSCOM inspections. In the latest standoff, UNSCOM inspectors left after two days of a round-the-clock stakeout outside an Iraqi plant. This sparked accusations from the United States that Iraq was deliberately concealing weapons.

The inspections question quickly became entangled in a rift in the 15-member Security Council over Iraq’s compliance with U.N. weapons demands.

The United States — which, with Britain, is one of two veto- wielding permanent Council members that oppose lifting Iraqi sanctions — was eager to call the standoff “a material breach of the (1991) cease-fire” that ended the Gulf War to oppose the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Briefly, the possibility of renewed U.S. zombing of Iraq, to punish a cease-fire violation, had opened.

Washington’s eagerness to punish Baghdad, however, was met with hostility by other Council members. Council President Nabil el- Araby of Egypt said that the Council rebuffed the idea that Iraq had violated its cease-fire after several members, including Egypt, objected.

“The mood in the Council was for ensuring access, that Iraq should not hinder any access (from UNSCOM),” el-Araby explained. But, he added, the Security Council does not favour any retaliation: “Who wants to bomb Iraq?”

The Council statement therefore only called the inspections standoff “a serious step backwards in Iraq’s cooperation with the Special Commission” — language which side-stepped any authorisation of punitive bombing or other retaliation.

Still, Baghdad has one main worry: As long as UNSCOM says it lacks information on Iraqi weaponry, the embargo remains in place. Although Iraq will soon begin to sell one billion dollars of oil every 90 days to buy humanitarian goods as an “oil-for-food” exception to the embargo, Saddam Hussein’s government clearly prefers the chance of lifting the sanctions entirely.

To show good faith, the Iraqis last weekend managed to inform UNSCOM how they concealed weapons data even as they deny that concealment continues. Ekeus explained that Baghdad has offered to show how weapons information was hidden up until August 1995, when the now-deceased Gen. Hussein Kamel, formerly head of the weapons programme, defected to Jordan.

At the same time, however, Iraq strenuously denies that it has hidden any data from UNSCOM since Kamel’s short-lived defection. “There we disagree,” Ekeus noted.

The UNSCOM envoy said the inspectors would return to Iraq soon to pick up where they left off. However, he added, there would be one crucial difference: UNSCOM will explicitly avoid uncovering any information not directly related to Iraq’s prohibited weapons programmes.

The lingering problem, Ekeus said, is that the same bodies that are suspected of hiding Iraq’s weapons data are also entrusted with providing security for Saddam Hussein and other key government figures. As a result, the chance for another rift continues to loom, he warned.