USA: U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBERS DECIDE TO DELAY DISTRIBUTION OF IRAQ'S MAMMOTH DECLARATION OF ITS DANGEROUS WEAPONS PROGRAMS

Record ID: 645768

  • Title: USA: U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBERS DECIDE TO DELAY DISTRIBUTION OF IRAQ'S MAMMOTH DECLARATION OF ITS DANGEROUS WEAPONS PROGRAMS
  • Date: 7th December 2002
  • Summary: (U6) NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (FILE) (REUTERS) SLV UNITED NATIONS
  • Embargoed: 22nd December 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / UNITED NATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA62G492573I6WSCGXQS83PYEX
  • Story Text: The U.N. Security Council members have decided to delay distribution of Iraq's mammoth and eagerly awaited declaration of its dangerous weapons programs until U.N. inspectors had a chance to review it.
    Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has been briefing the Council in New York on the inspections, deflecting criticism they are not working fast enough.
    Iraq has announced it will hand over its massive dossier on its weapons programmes over to the United Nations on Saturday (December 7, 2002) one day ahead of the December 8 deadline as demanded by last month's Security Council resolution.
    Following two hours of briefings by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, the Security Council decided that weapons experts from the U.N. bodies UNMOVIC and IAEA should examine the declaration first, before it is handed over to Council members for scrutiny, in case it contains sensitive information which could contribute to weapons proliferation.
    As Blix explained to reporters after the closed door meeting, "The Council was discussing the risks of releasing parts of this declaration that might help to achieve proliferation of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and the Council was fully aware that as the highest authority in the U.N system for security they must make sure that they itself respects conventions, the treaties."
    Blix outlined how it will take at least a few days to translate, transfer to CD-Rom and examine the huge dossier which is at least 10,000 pages long.
    The declaration will be handed over to UNMOVIC staff in Baghdad, on Saturday evening, then delivered to Vienna, the seat of the IAEA, and U.N headquarters in New York to Blix, on Sunday evening.
    During the Security Council meeting, Blix updated Council members on his team's progress with inspections in Baghdad.
    Deflecting criticism that inspections are moving too slowly, Blix argued that what the media witnesses after inspectors leave various sites may look like nothing, but in fact the inspectors have been hard at work.
    Urging patience, Blix said, "It is different when media goes in after us and they look at empty spaces and we go in with instruments, perhaps taking samples and environmental tests and so forth, it takes some time before that it analysed."
    The Bush administration has been laying the groundwork to declare Iraq in "material breach" of the Nov. 8 resolution, saying they have evidence, which they have not released to inspectors, that Baghdad has weapons of mass destruction. Such a declaration could lead to war.
    Asked about the information, the US claims it has, Blix urged Washington to hand over anything it has to his inspectors. Blix said, "Any country is too big for inspectors to comb through every square centimetre, you need to have information, and information comes through different sources, they come from satellites, they come from defectors, they come even from open media, they come from governments that may have intelligence about sites, so we will have to draw on all that.
    If you don't have information you can not systematically go through."
    Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, said he had been told "there are new elements in the report" but he did not know what there were. Aldouri also denied that Iraq possesses any weapons of mass destructions "We said again and again that we have no more destruction weapons at all. Everything has been destroyed and we have no intention to do that again, so Iraq is clean of any kind of destruction weapons."
    The resolution makes it clear that any breach would have to be verified by the inspectors, either on the ground or through their own analysis. The Security Council, in adopting a tough resolution, wanted to make sure Washington could not declare a violation by itself and then attack Iraq, claiming U.N.
    backing.
    The resolution also says that false statements in the declaration have to be coupled with other violations before a new material breach can be declared to the council, which has to assess the information but not necessarily authorize military action.
    Consequently, the White House this week has criticized Blix and the inspectors on three consecutive days, saying he was resisting more aggressive inspections and was hesitant to spirit Iraqi scientists out of the country.
    Some diplomats have said privately Washington seemed to be rushing the inspectors, who only returned to Baghdad 10 days ago after a four-year hiatus, in order to keep its own military timetable.
    Hans Blix is due to brief the Council again in the middle of next week, after he has had a chance to scrutinise the declaration.
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