POLITICS: U.N. Seeks Diversity for Weapons Monitors in Iraq

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 1997 (IPS) - The U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), giving signs of a possible deal with Iraq, is considering using a more internationally diverse team to monitor Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction.

Just days ago, UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat, rejected Iraqi arguments that the current team of more than 100 inspectors and support staff was dominated by the United States as “distasteful and wrong.” But at the special meeting of the 20-member executive body of UNSCOM on Friday, Butler mentioned the possibility that the weapons monitors could include an expanded international membership.

It may take weeks, or even longer, before UNSCOM’s recommendations to make its work proceed more effectively are accepted by the U.N. Security Council and implemented. Yet already, the nature of the debate Friday indicates that Baghdad has won a better climate for its proposals at the United Nations, following a three-week standoff over the fate of U.S. members of UNSCOM.

The Iraqi government announced Thursday that it would unconditionally accept all UNSCOM monitors, including U.S. nationals, just one week after it expelled six Americans and thereby provoked the departure of most of the 100-member force in Baghdad.

Yet Iraqi diplomats are pleased by how the re-admittance of the monitors has quickly been followed by discussions on the composition of UNSCOM.

“I think this is gratifying from all perspectives,” said Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon. “I think we were very successful in approaching the international community, the public and governments (during the standoff). Iraq’s position is clearer than ever.”

Moreover, Russia – whose foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, brokered the return of the monitors after a visit to Baghdad this week – is more active than ever in pushing the case for the phasing out of the seven-year-old U.N. embargo on Iraq.

“The Russian Federation, for its part, will work actively, subject to Iraq’s implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions, for a speedy lifting of the sanctions against Iraq…without any additional conditions,” declared a joint Russian-Iraqi statement, drafted after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz met Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow this week.

The United States and Britain have been opposed to a “speedy lifting” of the sanctions, and have argued that Baghdad cannot be trusted to meet the key condition for ending the embargo: destroying its chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range weapons.

Yet the momentum of the past few days has not gone Washington’s way. On Friday, Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov told reporters that, just as with any U.N. peacekeeping force, UNSCOM needed to have as many nations represented as it could.

Even when 77 UNSCOM monitors returned to Baghdad after a week’s absence, the force boasted fewer U.S. nationals than it had done just days earlier: only four U.S. inspectors returned with UNSCOM, compared to six who had been there prior to expulsion. Butler chalked up the discrepancy to the “regular rotation” of staff.

Certainly U.S. officials want to avoid any impression that the UNSCOM monitors will be revamped according to Iraq’s liking. U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson stressed that, if anything, “UNSCOM needs to be stronger,” and needs to have more access to potential Iraqi weapons sites. That in turn contrasts with Hamdoon’s assertion that some sensitive Iraqi installations, like some military bases and palaces belonging to President Saddam Hussein, ought to be off-limits.

Regardless of any deals struck by Primakov and Yeltsin, Washington also reserves the right to reject any concessions made to Iraq by the Security Council. “We are not ready to lift sanctions,” Richardson emphasised after Iraq’s declaration that the monitors would return. “Compliance must not be rewarded with carrots.”

After years of applying the stick of sanctions, however, many nations are eager to apply a few carrots to the situation as well. Russia and France both are waiting to sign oil and gas deals with Iraq once sanctions end, and many of the 15 member states in the Council have swung around to support their case for a timetable to phase out the embargo.

Washington likely would reject any such proposal outright. But some diplomats believe a different option may be worked out, in which UNSCOM closes its inspections of some key areas where it has largely verified Iraqi disarmament. In particular, the sources say, UNSCOM may be close to completing work on two of its ‘files’: verification of the scrapping of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.

“We are prepared to say that long-range imported Scud (missiles) are gone,” conceded Butler this week, noting that 817 of 819 of the long-range Scuds imported by Iraq have been accounted for. But even in the long-range missile file, the UNSCOM chief argued, the monitors need more information about possible Iraqi attempts to manufacture home-made missiles that can operate beyond 150 km., including ‘clustered’ missiles.

In other fields, notably those of biological and chemical weapons, UNSCOM has still been unable to account for significant quantities of materials.

As a result, few U.N. observers believe that the lifting of sanctions is imminent – but following three weeks of a tense military face-off, even a softening of the weapons inspections or recomposition of the monitors could be seen as a genuine victory for Baghdad.