POLITICS-MIDEAST: U.N. Security Council Raps Iraq

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 1998 (IPS) - The 15-member U.N. Security Council mildly rebuked Iraq Wednesday for failing to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors that were authorised to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction in the country.

“This failure (by Iraq) is unacceptable and a clear violation of the relevant (Security Council) resolutions” which ended the 1991 Gulf War, the Council said in joint statement.

This was the fourth such statement by ther Security Council, which appeared so sharply divided that it was unable to come up with a resolution to penalise Iraq for openly defying the world body.

Still, “we are pleased with this presidential statement,” U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson told reporters Wednesday, “It’s four in a row. They are unanimous; they are strong,” he added.

Asked why he thought this statement could work whereas the previous three had no effect, Richardson insisted that the Council had succeeded in marginalising Iraq by censuring it.

He said the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which briefly was barred from conducting its arms inspections late last year, resumed operations only after the Council had rebuked Iraq. “Iraq sees no possibility of sanctions being lifted. Iraq is an international pariah once again. It is decisively losing this battle,” he told reporters. “They’re up to their old tricks and we shouldn’t allow them to pursue this.”

The U.S. envoy also said that Iraq would pay a high price unless it complied with full and unconditional access to suspected weapons site. “Diplomacy is being used to the maximum extent here by the Security Council. Our objective is to resolve this problem diplomatically.”

While the U.S. and Britain have been trying to take harsher action against Iraq for its defiance, it had received little support for such a move by the other three veto-wielding, permanent members of the Security Council: China, Russia and France.

All three countries wanted sanctions relaxed against Iraq, primarily because of the hardships Iraqis continued to endure since the U.N. embargo came into force in August 1990.

On Tuesday, Iraq blocked U.N. weapons inspectors by refusing to provide escorts to facilitate entry into state-controlled sites. A similar stand-off took place in November last year but Iraqi President Saddam Hussein reversed his decision later and permitted U.N. inspectors to continue with their work.

But the state-run Iraqi News Agency said Tuesday that the new U.N. inspection team was heavily weighted in favour of the United States and Britain. Of the 16-member team, it said, nine were U.S. nationals, five Britons, one Russian and one Australian. The team is lead by Scott Ritter, a former U.S. marine captain who served in the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

The Iraqis accused Ritter of being a U.S. spy.

Responding to questions from reporters at the White House Wednesday, President Bill Clinton said he was “encouraged” by the “good statement out of the Security Council today.”

“It is clear that the international community knows that Saddam Hussein is doing the wrong thing. And we have to remain steadfast in our determination to continue the inspection process in a non- political way, where the leader of Iraq does not get to determine who, when and what is going on in that inspection process,” he added.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters that “the fact still remains that it is the United Nations and UNSCOM that decide who participates and who does not, and how the teams are put together. I hope Iraq will accept that premise and that we will be able to continue our work unimpeded.”

Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon told reporters that Iraq had no intention of dictating terms. He said his government was protesting the fact that nationals of “the United States and Britain on those teams is affecting the impartiality of those teams because of the very well known hostile American/British policy towards Iraq.”

UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler, who is expected in Baghdad Jan 19-20 to resolve the current crisis, said that the U.N. team really consisted of 44 persons drawn from 17 countries.

“The claims made in the statement by an Iraqi official spokesman seems to fail to take into account the facts with respect to the composition of the overall team of inspectors,” he said.

Annan said that he hoped the Iraqi authorities would not do anything “precipitious” and would wait to raise the issue with Butler. The Secretary-General described the Iraqi statement as the “first hiccup” since Iraq resumed cooperation with U.N. inspectors in November.

“It is a crisis of sorts, but I would not say that it is not containable,” he added.