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24 February 1998

RICHARDSON BRIEFS TOP US OFFICIALS ON UNSC MEETING ON IRAQ

(Comes to Washington directly from Annan's UN briefing) (550)
By Wendy S. Ross
USIA White House Correspondent
Washington -- US Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson
briefed President Clinton's national security team at the White House
February 24 on the weapons inspection agreement signed in Baghdad a
day earlier by Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Richardson flew to Washington immediately following the two-hour
briefing of the Security Council on the agreement by Annan, who had
just returned to New York from his weekend visit to Iraq.
"There have been good discussions at the Security Council in New York
today and Ambassador Richardson is coming back here to Washington to
report to the President's other national security advisors this
afternoon the nature of the discussion they've had at the Security
Council," White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters
before the White House meeting began.
President Clinton was not scheduled to be at the White House meeting,
McCurry said, because his principal foreign policy advisors "will be
going through a very technical discussion on the nature of some of the
presentations that have been made, and what we think some of the
additional clarifications are. It will be largely a technical
discussion." But Clinton will get a report on the meeting, when it is
over, McCurry said.
"There need to be some additional clarifications on some of the
questions that he (Richardson) has posed to the Secretary General. And
our assessment of that discussion and what other members of the
Security Council make of the discussion will be the subject that is
pursued at the Security Council in coming days," McCurry said. "We
intend to follow up with other members of the Council on the best way
in which they can proceed to effectively implement the agreement that
the Secretary General has reached," he added.
Asked to comment on the February 24 statement by the Secretary General
that he will retain Ambassador Richard Butler as Executive Director of
the United Nations Commission (UNSCOM) that monitors Iraqi compliance
with eliminating its weapons of mass destruction, McCurry said:
"We think Ambassador Butler has done admirable work and has led the
very highly-qualified team of professionals who have got the expertise
necessary to do the inspections in Iraq in a very qualified manner .
We've spoken favorably of the work they've done in the past seven
years to uncover facts about the biological and chemical weapons
programs that exist in Iraq.
"The fact that he will continue to be very central in the efforts of
the United Nations to do the inspections that now the government of
Iraq has agreed to is important," he said.
But McCurry made clear that beyond the issue of who fills the position
of the Executive Director of the Special Commission, "there are
additional questions and clarifications that we will be pursuing in
the coming days as we continue to work through this...there are a
number of issues that we are pursuing," he said.
"The United States will participate in a deliberative process in the
Security Council, make its views known in that setting, and then
presumably we will say more about it here," in coming days, he said.