IRAQ: Baghdad Decision to Expel U.S. Monitors Starts New Row

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 1997 (IPS) - Just days after it had escaped from the frying pan of new U.N. sanctions, the Iraqi government has plunged into the fire again by declaring it will expel all U.S. nationals from a team of U.N. weapons inspectors now in Iraq.

In a letter delivered Wednesday to Security Council President Juan Somavia of Chile, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz justified the decision to expel any U.S. inspectors working for the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) by noting the slow progress of the team’s work. The government in Baghdad has been impatient for UNSCOM to verify that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been scrapped so that a seven-year U.N. embargo on the country can be lifted.

“We are doing this out of frustration and out of the tragic situation of the Iraqi people,” Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon said after delivering Aziz’s letter here. He argued that “Iraq’s decision to ban all American nationals associated with the Special Commission from all activities” stemmed from the belief that the U.S. workers had played a role in the “procrastination and delays in (UNSCOM’s) work.”

UNSCOM, which currently stations some 100 inspectors and other experts in Iraq to monitor Baghdad’s biological, chemical, nuclear and long-range missile weapons capabilities, includes a dozen U.S. nationals — 10 of whom are in Iraq, and two in nearby Bahrain.

Also, the deputy chief of UNSCOM, Charles Duelfer — who is based in New York — is from the United States, and would be blocked from future travel to Iraq by the ban, one U.N. official said. More than 1,000 experts travel to and from Iraq for UNSCOM on short trips over the course of every year, with an undisclosed number of them U.S. nationals, as well, UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler said.

Butler strongly defended the objectivity of all UNSCOM staff, arguing, “We hire people on the basis of their professional competence.” He responded to the threatened expulsions by suspending all regular UNSCOM field operations in Iraq Wednesday.

“Who’s next?” he asked. “Today the United States, tomorrow (Britain) and so forth…the United Nations cannot be told which of its persons is or is not acceptable.”

U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin called the Iraqi warning “an attack on the very fundamentals of the U.N. system and in particular on UNSCOM’s responsibility to carry out its mandate.”

The latest controversy over the weapons team, diplomats say, is sure to bring new trouble for Iraq, just days after the 15-nation U.N. Security Council avoided imposing a travel ban against senior Iraqi officials.

The Council last week postponed a decision to ban all travel by Iraqi officials deemed to have interfered with UNSCOM’s work for six months. Instead, in a resolution backed strongly by the United States and approved by 10 of the 15 member states, the Council agreed to be ready to impose the travel ban in April if UNSCOM says it is still being blocked in its work. It also agreed to draw up a list of officials to be affected by any travel ban — which likely will include Aziz and President Saddam Hussein among its members.

Significantly, three of the Council’s five, veto-holding permanent members — Russia, France and China — abstained from voting last week, and have indicated they may object to any future sanctions. Russia and France have unsuccessfully lobbied for a timetable to end the U.N. embargo, imposed after Iraq’s short- lived 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The Wednesday letter, however, adds a new challenge to the Russian and French diplomats’ tasks. Already, officials from the two countries had spent the past few days urging Iraq to back off from statements by the Iraqi Parliament urging the government to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM. The U.S. State Department had warned of “serious consequences,” possibly including military action, if Iraq made good on the Parliament’s threat.

The Parliamentary vote “again demonstrates Iraq’s lack of commitment to U.N. inspections,” U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson told reporters in Nairobi Tuesday. “They violated several provisions of these inspections. They continue to thumb their nose at the international community.”

It is certain that the threat to expel the U.S. agents will also meet a severe U.N. response. British Ambassador John Weston declared the Council’s immediate intention to deal with the manner after Hamdoon delivered Aziz’s letter, and the U.N. executive body intends to warn Baghdad not to follow through with its intentions if it wishes to avoid new sanctions.

“Iraq is in no way opting for any confrontation,” Hamdoon said. He contended that all other UNSCOM officials would be permitted to do their work, and added, “The world is full of experts and people who can do work.”

He noted that Iraq nevertheless has allowed U.S. inspectors over the past seven years — even though the two nations have been at loggerheads since Washington drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait during the 1991 ‘Desert Storm’ war.

Iraq’s always chilly relations with UNSCOM worsened in recent weeks following Butler’s first report on its compliance with U.N. demands to disarm. Butler complained about the lack of credible Iraqi data on the current status of its alleged programme to deploy anthrax and other biological weapons. Earlier this month, he also told the Council that Hamdoon had threatened that all cooperation with UNSCOM would cease if any new sanctions were approved.

“There is only one exit route from sanctions, and it’s disarmament,” Butler emphasised. “The quicker they do that, the quicker they get on with their normal lives.”