Tracking Number: 236640
Title: "UN Will Continue to Press Iraq for Compliance." As UN inspectors prepare to continue their search for information on Iraq's weapons in the Agriculture Ministry, Baghdad's
abuse of the cease-fire terms continues to worry the international community. (920727)
Translated Title: L'ONU continuera de faire pression sur l'Irak (920727)
Author: AITA, JUDY (USIA STAFF WRITER)
Date: 19920727
Text:
U.N. WILL CONTINUE TO PRESS IRAQ FOR COMPLIANCE
(Ekeus says ministry documents probably moved) (690) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- As United Nations weapons inspectors prepare to continue their search for information on Iraq's weapons in the Agriculture Ministry building, Baghdad's abuse of the cease-fire terms continues to worry the international community.
"I was probably naive to say before the fifth of July" that the Special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraq's weapons had developed a good record with Iraq, Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, commission chairman, admitted.
Ekeus conceded that after the delay, which began when the U.N. team approached the building July 5, "most probably this building has been quite effectively cleaned out. I recognize that."
"But we are still looking for traces or there may be some material of significance for us covering all aspects," including related nuclear information, he said at a July 26 news conference. "Essential material may be destroyed but there are things you don't destroy because you need it or if it isn't destroyed, it will be relocated or hidden."
Ekeus said there also are gaps in the information collected by the commission and the inspectors are now looking for "secret research, some specific equipment, mapping out supplier system."
Ekeus will accompany the inspectors to Baghdad where he will meet with Iraqi officials and present the commission's complaints about the incident, including the lack of security granted the inspectors. He would like to "sort out once and for all" the issue of getting the remaining material on the banned weapons programs.
Under the Security Council cease-fire agreement, Iraq is to declare and disclose to the commission all its current and planned programs for chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile weapons, which it has not done yet. The commission "cannot negotiate away any sites," Ekeus made clear, adding that the cease-fire resolution gives the commission access to "every facility, every area, every place in Iraq."
According to Ekeus, the special commission has fielded 40 inspection teams that "have successfully identified existing weapons and destroyed them....Even more important the production capabilities, large number of factories and buildings, have been identified and been destroyed -- exploded, destroyed, cut to pieces. An enormous amount of equipment and pieces of equipment have been destroyed."
Ekeus said that Iraq can no longer threaten other countries in the region "through intimidation and terror." Baghdad no longer has the ability "to exercise any long range warfare, no missile capability, no launching capability, and is far from developing nuclear and chemical material," he said.
Nonetheless, he made clear, Iraq "still has quite a formidable air force...(and) a strong conventional land force with tanks and artillery; conventional weapons are not prohibited by the cease-fire.
One of the remaining problems for the U.N. is to get Iraq to accept the commission's plan for long-term monitoring of the banned weapons programs to ensure that Baghdad does not resume research, development and production of the weapons.
The allies threat to use force if Iraq didn't agree to the inspections "put an element of reality into our discussions," Ekeus said, but he noted that he had a feeling as late as July 25 that "not the full risk and enormous weight of the consequences had fully penetrated Baghdad."
While conceding that the threat of a military strike helped bring home to Iraq the seriousness of the standoff, air attacks might not be the best way to eliminate Iraq's weapons, Ekeus said.
"With all respect and admiration for the military forces, they did not succeed to destroy the military weapons fundamentally," he said. "Hardly any SCUD missiles were destroyed in the attacks....None of the mobile launchers was really destroyed" during the Gulf war.
"The large amount of chemical weapons were not destroyed through bombing. Nothing of the research in the nuclear area was really destroyed," he added. "That has been destroyed through the peaceful means."
The commission has demonstrated that "arms control...is the way to destroy weapons and not through bombing attacks," Ekeus said.
NNNN
File Identification: 07/27/92, PO-104; 07/27/92, AE-111; 07/27/92, AR-123; 07/27/92, EP-115; 07/27/92, EU-103; 07/27/92, NE-104; 07/28/92, AF-206
Product Name: Wireless File
Product
Code: WF
Languages: French
Keywords: UNITED NATIONS; INSPECTIONS; ARMS CONTROL; FORCE & TROOP LEVELS; ARMISTICE; IRAQ/Defense & Military; IRAQ/Politics & Government; HUSSEIN, SADDAM; IRAQ-US
RELATIONS; MILITARY INTERVENTION
Thematic Codes: 1NE; 1ME; 2FP
Target Areas: AF; AR; EA; EU; NE
PDQ Text Link: 236640; 236810
USIA Notes: *92072704.POL
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