ACCESSION
ACCESSION NUMBER:239399 FILE ID:PO-104 DATE:08/17/92 TITLE:U.N. TEAM FINDS SIGNIFICANT NEW MISSILE DATA IN IRAQ (08/17/92) TEXT:*92081704.POL U.N. TEAM FINDS SIGNIFICANT NEW MISSILE DATA IN IRAQ (Inspectors have no difficulties at sites) (540) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- U.N. weapons inspectors have found "significant" information on Iraqi ballistic weapons programs, the Special Commission on the destruction of Iraq's weapons said August 17. A spokesman for the commission, Tim Trevan, said that the 22-member U.N. team "visited all the sites it was instructed to....It conducted successful inspections at all those sites and was not denied access at any of them" by Iraqi officials. He added that no ministries were on the list examined in the past week. Trevan said the commission will discuss what the team found after the data collected is analyzed more carefully. However, he confirmed that the team, led by Russian missile expert Nikita Smidovich, "found significant additional information concerning the ballistic missiles program." The inspections were the first since the end of the three-week standoff at the Ministry of Agriculture building in Baghdad. Iraq, asserting inspections in its ministries would violate its sovereignty, refused to admit a U.N. team into the facility last month -- and in recent days Iraqi officials have reasserted their opposition to inspections at its ministries. Meanwhile, members of the gulf coalition have threatened to use force if Iraq again attempts to bar inspectors from sites the commission feels might have information about the chemical, biological, nuclear, and ballistic weapons programs that must be destroyed under the U.N.-brokered cease-fire which ended hostilities in the Persian Gulf war. And Trevan, who noted that commission policy prevents the listing of sites either before or after an inspection, insisted that U.N. inspectors will target ministry buildings if they feel weapons information is located there. "We have the right to go anywhere in Iraq at any time when we have reason to believe that a site may have information relating to our mandate," Trevan said. "And we will exercise that right wherever we need to." "It's not the Iraqi government that decides where we go or what our rights are. We have been given our rights by the Security Council," he said. "Neither we (the commission members) nor the Iraqi government can change 1hose rights. It's only the Security Council that can." The commission "clearly...established our rights" to enter ministry buildings on two different occasions: the Ministry of Industry and Minerals in February and the Ministry of Agriculture in August, Trevan added. Asked if the United States had asked the team to visit certain sites, Trevan said that the commission receives "information and advice from a variety of sources -- individuals, organizations, and governments -- and a lot of that relates to sites where we might do inspections." "We make no secret of the fact that the U.S. government is one of our main supporters in our operations," he added. "But that said, it is the commission that analyzes the information that comes in; it is the commission that decides whether, when, and where to inspect. And the basis on which we do that...is purely our mandate and whether that is an effective way of filling the mandate." NNNN .
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