IRAQ: Baghdad Has Much More to Reveal, New U.N. Report Says

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 1995 (IPS) - Iraq’s chances to see the end of a five-year U.N. embargo took another blow here Wednesday with the recommendation by U.N. weapons monitors to re-open investigations of Baghdad’s military arsenal.

The U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which monitors the scrapping of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, now argues that its previous work may need to be revised because of Baghdad’s efforts at hiding several weapons programmes.

“Iraq has been concealing proscribed activities and that, consequently, some of the assessments in the Commission’s earlier reports have to be revised,” UNSCOM said in its latest report to the Security Council.

More specifically, the report accuses Baghdad of concealing data about its production of Scuds and other long-range missiles, its efforts to acquire components of the advanced chemical nerve agent ‘VX’, and its concealment of a biological weapons programme.

In addition to seeking revised information, UNSCOM says it may now be necessary to destroy facilities and items involved particularly in making the biological weapons.

In each case of questions over its weaponry, Baghdad has come clean with new information over the summer and promised a “full, final and complete disclosure.”

But the new information may come too late to help Iraq win the lifting of U.N. sanctions, which have been in place since Aug 1990, on all but food and medical goods. For the sanctions to be lifted, the Security Council must first be assured by UNSCOM that Iraq has ended its proscribed weapons activities.

The government of President Saddam Hussein has insisted in recent months that it has met the Council’s demands and urged a swift end to the embargo.

But last August, following the defection of former Iraqi Interior Minister Hussein Kamel al-Majid to Jordan, cracks began to appear in Baghdad’s story. With Kamel threatening to reveal Iraq’s weapons programmes in detail, Baghdad quickly turned over thousands of pages of documents to UNSCOM Chairman Rolf Ekeus.

Among other things, the new information revealed that Iraq had begun a crash programme to build missiles filled with toxic bacteria — including botulism and anthrax — before the 1991 U.S.- led Gulf War. Iraq never used the weapons in the war and claims now that it destroyed the agents.

But Ekeus and UNSCOM now doubt Iraq’s credibility, especially given its denials, as late as August, that it never had any biological weapons programme.

Even other programmes, such as Iraq’s long-range missiles, now win only suspicion from UNSCOM, months after Ekeus tentatively proclaimed that Iraq no longer posed a military threat.

“The Commission has recently obtained information that Iraq has resumed its acquisition efforts in support of its missile facilities,” the UNSCOM report says.

“Iraq placed a number of orders, both directly and indirectly (through middlemen and front companies), for the purchase of equipment, technologies, supplies and material for both missile and non-missile related activities at these facilities,” it adds.

Iraq has now admitted to UNSCOM that it tried to expand its ‘Ababil-100’ programme to build surface-to-surface missiles with ranges between 100 and 150 kilometres. Such military purchases violate both U.N. sanctions and Iraq’s weapons bans.

The new information can be sure to displease Iraq’s supporters on the Security Council, notably Russia and France, who have sought an early end to the sanctions. They have admitted in recent months they face an uphill task, particularly since the biological weapons came to light.

Britain and the United States, who favour maintaining the embargo, couldn’t be more pleased. One British diplomat, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday, “We’re very pleased. (The report) proves exactly what we’ve been saying all along.”

UNSCOM still hopes that its cooperation in recent weeks with Iraq may bring an earlier resolution of the protracted standoff with the Security Council.

“If Iraq were genuinely to translate its statements into action, there would be a real hope for the completion of the task entrusted to the Special Commission within a reasonable time- frame,” the report said.

But no diplomat here expects the resolution will come any time soon, let alone by this Friday — the next time the Council decides whether to renew sanctions on Iraq for another 60 days.