POLITICS-IRAQ: Role of UN Envoy Closley Examined

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 1998 (IPS) - With talk of military action against Iraq growing louder in the ongoing standoff over U.N. weapons inspectors, several nations here are keeping a wary eye on the central U.N. official in the dispute.

Richard Butler, the Australian-born chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) that must verify the scrapping of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, has had to explain some very blunt speeches he has made over the Iraqi situation.

Butler’s latest hard-hitting remarks came in an interview with The New York Times this week and he said that Iraq possesses enough biological weaponry to “blow away Tel Aviv.

Chinese Ambassador Qin Huasun responded on Friday that it was “inappropriate” for UNSCOM officials to disclose any information that was not previously presented to the 15-nation Security Council, which supervises the weapons inspectors’ work. “UNSCOM…should always work under (the Council’s) guidance,” Qin said.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov added that the Security Council would ask Butler if he in fact possessed any information “that Iraq does have the capability to blow away Tel Aviv” – a possibility, the diplomat added pointedly, which the UNSCOM chairman did not previousdly mention to the Council.

Baghdad has also lashed out at Butler, with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahaf warning U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter this week that the UNSCOM chair’s comments on Tel Aviv were unbefitting an international civil servant. Instead, al-Sahaf argued, Butler had “adopted the aggressive posture” of the United States.

For many U.N. officials, the dispute over Butler’s words is at best a distraction at a time when Baghdad is blocking UNSCOM from inspecting eight presidential complexes and threatening a six- month deadline for the weapons monitors to complete their investigation.

“Butler is simply doing his work,” said one U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But he is up against an enormous and sophisticated propaganda machine.”

Butler has repeatedly dismissed what he calls Iraqi attempts to personalise the weapons standoff. “I haven’t taken anything that has been said personally, and I hope we can continue working on a professional level,” the diplomat, formerly Australia’s U.N. ambassador, said last month after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz accused Butler of misrepresenting Iraq’s military capabilities.

Despite Butler’s words, Iraq has succeeded at drawing attention to UNSCOM officials themselves – particularly by its repeated blocking of U.S. nationals on the inspections team. A case in point is former U.S. Marine officer Scott Ritter, who left Baghdad this month following a lengthy campaign in which Iraq accused him of being a U.S. spy, a charge which Butler scorned as “nonsense”.

Similarly, Butler in a report last week was compelled to respond to Iraqi accusations that, as he put it, “officers of UNSCOM have sought to prolong our coming to conclusion on disarmament issues so that they can keep their jobs and incomes.” Those accusations, Butler said, “are utterly untrue and distasteful.”

Yet, with prospects of a U.S. military strike on Iraq looming larger and U.S. diplomats lobbying European and Arab allies intensively to support any use of force, the focus on Butler and UNSCOM has given Iraq’s Council defenders a means to assert that the United Nations should lower the temperature.

“We call upon the parties concerned to exercise restraint and resolve their difficulties through peaceful means,” Qin emphasised. “China is against the use, or threat of use, of force.”

Lavrov argued that “the use of force is not only unacceptable but counterproductive” since it would delay Iraq’s cooperation with weapons inspectors, and therefore push back the completion of UNSCOM’s mission to certify the destruction of Baghdad’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. In any case, the Russian envoy added, “there is no threat coming from Iraq.”

That is not what the United States believes, and Butler shares Washington’s doubts that Baghdad no longer poses a military threat. In his comments to the Times, Butler contended that Iraq possesses enough anthrax or botulin toxin to mount an offensive, and had missile systems to deliver biological weapons that “were very crude, but they work.”

International opposition to a U.S. strike – strong enough to avert the use of force when the standoff worsened in November – has weakened in recent days, particularly as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson have mounted an effort to lobby European allies and most Security Council member states.

“I think there is general agreement that the time for diplomacy has all but run out, and that Iraq cannot be permitted to violate the will of the international community with impunity,” Richardson said in Stockholm Friday.

“The United States feels it does not need any additional Security Council action to justify use of force,” he added. “We are prepared to take whatever action may be necessary without any additional Council action.”

Diplomats say the likeliest prospects are for a U.S. offensive to begin after a final push for a negotiated solution over the next two weeks.