13 February 1998
SOLUTION TO IRAQ CRISIS POSSIBLE IF PERM FIVE COOPERATE, EKEUS SAYS
(Notes "great satisfaction" that UNSCOM destroyed al Hakim) (540) By Rick Marshall USIA Staff Writer Washington -- Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish diplomat who headed the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) from its creation in 1991 until the fall of 1997, told an audience at Meridian House February 12 that he believes a solution to the Iraq crisis is still possible, provided the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council can come together on a plan and back it up with a solid military threat. Saddam Hussein is not the man of steel he is sometimes portrayed as, Ekeus said. "I think he is very shaky. ... There is a very fair possibility" that he will back down and permit a resumption of UNSCOM inspections if the allied coalition can act in a coordinated fashion." But the task will not be easy. "It will take a lot to convince Saddam Hussein to give up" his quest for weapons of mass destruction, for without them Iraq will be reduced to the level of other minor powers in the region. Ekeus, now ambassador to the United States, said that when he initially arrived in Baghdad after the war and after Iraq had pledged to reveal the full extent of its weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, he believed Iraq would work with the inspectors. But now, almost seven years later, Baghdad has still not fully accounted for all its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, or its missiles. Nonetheless, the international scientists and specialists who make up UNSCOM managed to discover a great deal over the years. The most important program appears to have involved Iraq's ultra-secret biological weapons (BW). Hidden for years from almost everyone, including most of the Cabinet, little was known about the program until the defection of Saddam Hussein's brother in the summer of 1995. When Ekeus presented the BW dossier to the U.N. Security Council, "Iraq totally denied it," Ekeus said quietly. It was therefore a "great satisfaction" to see the huge BW facility called al Hakim -- which the Iraqis had claimed was devoted to poultry research -- destroyed in the summer of 1996, he said. UNSCOM can account for all but two of the 817 Scud missiles Iraq had in its various inventories prior to the Gulf War, Ekeus said. But more serious may be the missiles which were developed from Russian missiles by Iraqi engineers under the secret "17.8" program. Documents indicate some 80 of these missiles were produced. When asked about them by UNSCOM inspectors, the Iraqis replied: "don't worry, they didn't work very well," Ekeus related. Should we trust them, he asked? Better that the investigations continue. Ekeus described briefly how two hand-picked groups -- the Special Security Organization and the Special Republic Guards -- control the transportation and concealment of much of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons. The technique is to be mobile, he said, keeping everything loaded and moving on trucks. Indeed, weapons of terror are all that Saddam Hussein has left. The country's economy is shattered, and the Iraqi leader has chosen to do without some 120 billion dollars in oil revenues rather than cooperate with the U.N. Security Council resolutions and reveal the full extent of his WMD programs. (For more information on this subject, contact our special Iraq website at: http://www.usia.gov/iraq)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
