Tracking Number: 255167
Title: "UN Security Council Keeps Sanctions Against Iraq." Asserting that Iraq has not fully met obligations it agreed to under the Persian Gulf war cease-fire, the UN Security
Council rebuffed Iraq's request to lift wide-ranging mandatory economic and military sanctions imposed against it during the invasion of Kuwait. (921124)
Translated Title: Consejo Seguridad ONU Mantiene Sanciones Contra Irak
(921124)
Author: AITA, JUDY (USIA STAFF WRITER)
Date: 19921124
Text:
U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL KEEPS SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ
(Says Baghdad has not met cease-fire pledges) (800) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- Asserting that Baghdad has not fully met obligations it agreed to under the Persian Gulf war cease-fire, the U.N. Security Council November 24 rebuffed Iraq's request to lift wide-ranging mandatory economic and military sanctions imposed against it during the invasion of Kuwait.
At the end of a two-day meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the council issued a statement through its president that it has seen no indication "of how the government of Iraq intends to comply with the resolutions of the council."
The council also regretted "the baseless threats, allegations and attacks launched by the deputy prime minister of Iraq against the council, the special commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Boundary Demarcation Commission, and the committee established by resolution 661 (the sanctions committee).
Tariq Aziz complained that "a number of influential countries in the council" had decided before the meeting even began "not to ease the sanctions, not to focus on the real progress that has taken place."
"This is proof of the unjust treatment of the council to Iraq," he said. The council made its decision following presentations by the heads of the IAEA and the Special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi weapons (UNSCOM). Both told the council November 23 of Iraq's failure to cooperate fully with them.
Hans Blix, IAEA director general, and Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, executive chairman of UNSCOM, cited Iraq's refusal to divulge the names of foreign companies that supplied material and technology to construct weapons of mass destruction, and they outlined Baghdad's reluctance to accept plans for long-term monitoring and verification. They both recommended continued on-site inspections.
Blix said that although his agency has a "consistent and coherent picture of Iraq's nuclear program...we cannot be certain that it is complete."
"Iraq's unwillingness so far to reveal foreign sources of equipment, material and technology make it difficult to ascertain whether all nuclear-related important equipment and material has been identified," Blix said.
"This information is needed to dispel existing suspicions that more equipment and material may remain in Iraq than what has been identified," the IAEA director said.
Iraq has yet to provide information on items which were destroyed during the gulf war or that existed in Iraq as of January 1, 1989, he said.
Blix explained that key buildings, equipment and material at Iraq's nuclear installations at Al Atheer, Tarmiya, and Ash Sharqat have been destroyed. The only nuclear-weapons-usable material known to remain, and which will be removed from Iraq, is an irradiated reactor fuel assembly that is controlled by IAEA.
In 15 missions to more than 70 sites, IAEA inspectors gradually mapped out Iraq's broad-based secret nuclear program to produce enriched uranium and develop nuclear weapons, he said.
But Ekeus pointed out that Iraq has refused to provide and to substantiate "vital information on matters such as foreign procurement, indigenous production, and operational use of weapons in the various internal and external conflicts in which Iraq has been involved."
In response to Iraqi claims that it has destroyed all such relevant material, Ekeus said it is "well-nigh inconceivable that Iraq spent billions of dollars and years of research on its programs and that it has now destroyed every record of those programs and of technology on which they were based."
The most serious problems between UNSCOM and Iraq involve the plan for ongoing monitoring and verification. Iraq continues to insist that monitoring be conducted on its own terms, Ekeus said, adding that if sanctions and the oil embargo were lifted "the effectiveness of the Special Commission in Iraq would be gravely impaired."
"If the course presently pursued by Iraq continues," Ekeus said he will have no choice but to "come to the council again and again with the assessment that I made last March -- namely that the possibility of the Special Commission's certifying Iraq's compliance...does not even arise."
Max van der Stoel, special rapporteur of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile said that Iraq continues to repress civilians, especially the Kurds in the north and Shia in the southern marshes. People in the southern marshlands are being subjected to a total blockade, van der Stoel said. A virtually complete embargo of fuel supplies has been applied to governments in the north.
Sheikh Saud Nassar Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti minister of information, also pleaded for the return of Kuwaiti and third country nationals missing and detained. "We know quite rightly the interest the Iraqis have of keeping our people in prisons: to create problems inside Kuwait...to deprive families of loved ones."
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File Identification: 11/24/92, POL201; 11/24/92, EPF209; 11/24/92, EUR207; 11/24/92, LEF213; 11/24/92, NEA204; 11/24/92, NAA207; 11/25/92, LSI306
Product Name: Wireless File
Product
Code: WF
Languages: Arabic; Spanish
Keywords: UNITED NATIONS-SECURITY COUNCIL; IRAQ/Politics & Government; SANCTIONS; IRAQ/Foreign Affairs; AZIZ, TARIQ; PERSIAN GULF WAR; TREATIES & AGREEMENTS;
ARMISTICE; BLIX, HANS; ARMS CONTROL VERIFICATION
Thematic Codes: 1UN; 1NE
Target Areas: EA; EU; AR; NE
PDQ Text Link: 255167; 255529
USIA Notes: *92112401.POL
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