• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

...............

QUESTION: Butler is finished up in Baghdad. Do you have any evaluation, preliminarily, on his visit?

MR. RUBIN: We have some preliminary reports about what happened in the visit, and obviously both Chairman Butler and Deputy Prime Minister Aziz have had a chance to talk to the press. Let me emphasize that we are obviously looking for Iraq to comply with UN Security Council resolutions to provide full, unfettered access to sites and information, in accordance with the UN's inspections. The Iraqis have never done so.

UNSCOM's chairman went to Baghdad with a clear message from the Security Council -that Iraq must cooperate fully and unconditionally with the UN. However, the initial reports are not encouraging. It appears that Iraq has ignored the message of the Security Council, and instead tried to impose new and unacceptable conditions on the UN's operations there; including some kind of moratorium on UN inspections of certain sites.

So the issue is not one where Iraq is in a position to seek to evade or obfuscate its requirements. What we need is Iraqi compliance, not Iraqi excuses. Ambassador Butler plans to brief the Security Council on Friday. It's premature to speculate on what actions might be taken until after he has had a chance to report fully on his visit. But again, we are not ruling out any options.

QUESTION: Butler quotes Aziz as saying the Iraqis are willing to take their chances with the UN. Do you think they're betting on a lack of will?

MR. RUBIN: Well, on the contrary, I think the will of the permanent members of the Security Council - in fact, all the Security Council members - are increasingly clear; and that is that Iraqi excuses have gone on for far too long. We just saw Deputy Prime Minister Aziz talk about the difference between inspections and technical monitoring. What I think people need to understand is that if it hadn't been for UNSCOM's work and UNSCOM's determination to get to the bottom of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, the hundreds of tons of chemical agents, the dozens of missiles and a whole series of extremely dangerous - horrifyingly dangerous - materials and equipment would not have been destroyed. And if UNSCOM hadn't done investigative work: The declarations that Iraq provided during the course of the last several years have barely resembled what UNSCOM was able to uncover. The simplest reminder of that is the biological weapons information that came about when one of the Iraqi top officials defected and provided details.

So investigation has proven to be critical in uncovering the depth, the extent of Iraq's program. The members of the Security Council have made clear that they support UNSCOM's work not only in ensuring that what Iraq declares it has is destroyed, but in being able to determine what Iraq has. Given Iraqi obfuscation and denial and hiding of these facts over the last several years, there's no way to do that by simply sending an expert, a technical expert, to some site and watch a missile be destroyed. It's their refusal to provide a true declaration of what they've done that has led UNSCOM chairman after UNSCOM chairman to say that they have to take every reasonable step they can to prove everything Iraq tells them, because over and over again those declarations have proved to be wrong and misleading.

QUESTION: Jamie, do you find any more cohesiveness on the part of the Security Council members in regard to military action, should the US or anyone else want to take it? And specifically, has the Secretary been in touch with Foreign Minister Primakov in the last three or four days?

MR. RUBIN: As far as the answer to the last question is concerned, I'm not aware of any contact between Secretary Albright and Foreign Minister Primakov on the question of next steps on Iraq in the last 48 hours or so, or even going back three days.

I think the pattern that's appropriate here is to give a strong message of support to Chairman Butler and make clear to the Iraqis that they have to comply with his requirements, and then allow the UNSCOM chairman to try to negotiate or talk to the Iraqis in such a way that the result is new access. What we saw unfortunately was new excuses, not new access. Then, upon Ambassador Butler's return to New York, the Security Council members will be able to get an opportunity to examine in full the report that he makes and be able to consider next steps.

Again, all I can say on the military question is that we haven't ruled that option out, and that our hope is that the determination of the Council to go the extra mile diplomatically will make it clear to all that the United States has done what it can to try to convince Iraq, through the United Nations, to comply.

QUESTION: Short of military action, could you tell us about any of the diplomatic options you may still have?

MR. RUBIN: Well, again, we are not consulting now about next steps until after Ambassador Butler's report on Friday, later this week. So it would be premature for me to discuss publicly things that require the report to occur -- and a certain kind of report -- to trigger those kind of consultations.

QUESTION: Is the United States in accord with Ambassador Butler's statement that the UN would not object to U-2 flights being supplemented by other national flights, maybe Russian?

MR. RUBIN: Yes, we are in accord with the UNSCOM chairman's position on this, which is, as I understand it, publicly stated, that the U-2's unique capabilities could be supplemented by additional surveillance capabilities.

And I would just point out that some of the proposed aircraft other countries have offered are very useful, but don't have the wide-area coverage that the U-2 provides. So let me say this very clearly here: We encourage and support the provision of expertise, equipment and personnel to UNSCOM by countries around the world. That's been our position all along. It's up to the chairman of UNSCOM to decide what equipment, what people and what expertise and equipment best serve his purpose, because he's got a tough job. As you can see, from Iraqi obfuscation after obfuscation, it is a very tough job to nail down exactly what Iraq produced in this area and confirm what it has produced or could produce has been destroyed before we can get to the question of long-term monitoring.

QUESTION: Jamie, not to beat this already dead horse, but you've said, and Mike McCurry from the White House has said this, as well as other officials, that Iraqi excuses have gone on too long. You all keep saying this when we have these flare-ups. But I'm sort of confused as to how long the excuses continue to go on before you leap and jump to some other means of trying to get him to comply, other than not just military action, but something tougher than diplomacy. I mean, when do you exhaust the road -- try to go down another path?

MR. RUBIN: Well, I guess I can answer the question this way: Secretary Albright and the President and the other officials in the NSC, as well as Secretary Cohen, who's now joined the team over the last year, are very determined to get the job done; and they are keeping their eye on the ball. The ball is to contain Iraq militarily and to get Iraq to allow UNSCOM to confirm what it has in the area of weapons of mass destruction.

This is a long-term policy that requires determination and firmness. And we have many times faced situations where Iraq has made excuses or obfuscated or flat-out lied to the special commission - as in the case of biological weapons. When the Security Council's determination has been shown, time after time, Iraq has backed down. That was true most recently in November on the question of no Americans being allowed in inspection teams.

So we have a pretty good understanding of what the right course is here. If the Secretaries of State and Defense and the National Security Advisor and others believe that diplomacy has run its course, they may make other recommendations and the President may or may not accept them. But we're going to do that in our timeframe and with the considerations that we believe will best serve our purpose.

.....................