IRAQ-UN: U.N. Treads Carefully in Weapons Row

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 1997 (IPS) - U.N. diplomats are treading warily to avoid a possible escalation of the conflict with Iraq on weapons monitors, following reports that Baghdad may have hidden key equipment linked to weapons manufacture.

The U.N. Security Council Thursday formally received information from the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which monitors Iraq’s military arsenal, of Baghdad’s attempts to hide weapons-related equipment, but the 15-nation Council will wait until next Monday before taking any action, diplomats told IPS.

Instead, Council President Qin Huasun of China said only that the body, which is the U.N. executive branch, “expresses concern over the removal of equipment…To interfere in any way with the ongoing monitoring is not in conformity with relevant (U.N.) resolutions.”

U.N. sources say that only four of the Council’s 15 members – the United States, Britain, Costa Rica and Poland – favoured punishing Iraq for moving equipment around at the same time that UNSCOM inspections have been effectively blocked by Iraq’s move to expel U.S. nationals who work for the monitors.

The remaining Council members, although united in the effort to maintain U.N. oversight of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, have been more concerned with preventing an increasingly tense standoff between the United States and Iraq.

“The most important thing is to avoid an escalation that would lead to military intervention,” said Ambassador Antonio Monteiro of Portugal. Council members, he added, were agreed on the need to rely on diplomacy – chiefly on the work of a three-member U.N. team currently in Iraq – to prevent the latest impasse from worsening.

The United States, which has tried in vain for months to win new U.N. penalties against any Iraqi officials who obstruct UNSCOM’s work, in recent days has backed away from any talk of military intervention against Iraq. Washington went along with a decision by UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat, to cancel two U-2 flights over Iraq which the Baghdad government deemed provocative.

On Thursday, U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen also downplayed any threat of a U.S. military strike against Iraq, arguing that the diplomatic efforts need to be pursued and that unified action among U.N. member states must continue. However, Cohen added that Iraq would have to back down from its threat to expel the U.S. monitors, saying, “That is not negotiable.”

UNSCOM monitoring teams have been turned back from Iraqi weapons sites five times over the past week, in each case because the teams would not carry out their work after Iraqi officials said that the U.S. members participating would be excluded. There are currently six U.S. investigators working in Iraq, out of an overall team of roughly 100 people.

The standoff over the U.S. inspectors appeared to ease after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched a three-member team led by Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi to Baghdad to emphasise the importance of allowing UNSCOM to perform its tasks.

The team sent a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Thursday following two days of discussions with senior Iraqi officials, and Hussein is expected to deliver a response on the UNSCOM dispute to the envoys before they leave on Friday. But, even as the arrival of the envoys muted the war of words between Baghdad and Washington in recent days and temporarily postponed any expulsions of U.S. nationals, the movement of the weapons- linked equipment threatened to deepen the crisis.

Butler warned the Security Council Wednesday that UNSCOM could no longer verify that instruments, including gyroscopes and laboratory items, that had been monitored until last week were not being used to improve missile-guidance systems or to manufacture biological weapons. Butler said he would present a full report on obstructions to the Council next Monday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, in a letter to the Council, admitted that some of the equipment normally monitored by UNSCOM has been moved in recent days. But al-Sahaf said Baghdad moved the equipment because of worries that it “might be damaged by military strikes, as they were in 1993,” when the United States hit several Iraqi targets in retaliation for what President Bill Clinton alleged was an assassination attempt against former President George Bush. (The claim was never proven.)

The possibility that Iraq might be using the current impasse to hide evidence has prompted some top diplomats to ask if UNSCOM could in fact send its monitors out again, without the U.S. members, a senior U.N. official said. But Butler rejected that suggestion, the official added, arguing that if he made any concessions, “the Iraqis would start setting off fireworks in celebration.”

The official argued that, with the exception of one U.S. monitor, alleged by Iraq to be a spy, the other U.S. nationals neither provoked controversy nor performed exceptionally demanding tasks. “Some of these guys just clean lenses and fix cameras, so I don’t know what (Iraq’s) problem is with them,” he said.