01 October 1998
UN, IRAQ TALKS ON COMPLIANCE CONTINUE
(UNSCOM censures former inspector for revealing sources) (1150) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- As important diplomatic efforts are under way between the United Nations and Iraq on weapons inspections, the head of the Special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi weapons (UNSCOM) publicly criticized a former UN weapons inspector for divulging sensitive information about the commission's sources. Secretary General Kofi Annan and senior UN officials held a working dinner with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and other Iraqi officials attending the opening of the General Assembly September 30 on "the need for Iraq to come back into full compliance with Security Council resolutions, which of course is a precondition for proceeding with the comprehensive review that is being discussed," a UN spokesman said. "The secretary general feels that they are making progress," UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said. The meeting, however, came hours after Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammad al-Sahaf told the General Assembly that a comprehensive review of Iraq's compliance would reveal that Baghdad had fulfilled all of its disarmament obligations under the Gulf War cease-fire demands and would break the latest stalemate with weapons inspections. The minister gave no indication that Baghdad was ready to resume cooperation with UNSCOM. The Security Council declared in September that it will not conduct even regular periodic sanctions reviews, let alone a comprehensive review, until Iraq allows the intrusive UNSCOM inspections to resume. At a hastily called press conference October 1, UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler sought to clarify a number of issues about the disarmament of Iraq that have been circulating in the press and the corridors of UN headquarters as the stalemate with Baghdad continued. He talked about Iraq's nuclear and VX nerve gas weapons programs, cooperation with Israel, and events linked to the resignation of one of UNSCOM's chief inspectors, Scott Ritter. All the issues, he said, return to the central issue of the need for Iraq to cooperate fully with UNSCOM and provide the complete and accurate information the weapons inspectors have asked for. On the results of tests for VX nerve gas on Iraqi missile fragments being conducted in France and Switzerland, Butler said, "I want to put the record straight: All the lab work is not yet done. We do not have all the results. This is the authority statement on that." In June, Butler said tests conducted at the U.S. Army lab in Aberdeen, Maryland, showed traces of VX nerve gas. UNSCOM then sent other samples to labs in France and Switzerland. There have been press reports that the other tests found no traces of the deadly VX. "The real story about VX is not these warhead remnants and the lab examination, because it is only a portion of the story relating to weaponization. The real story is that Iraq has never told us convincingly how much of the VX it made," he said. "The history of VX is that Iraq told us for years that it never made any. We discovered by inspection -- and I really like to say that because it proves the value of inspections -- that was not true," the UNSCOM chief said. "Iraq then said, well it only made 200 liters of it. ... By our further work we were able to demonstrate that that was simply not true, that they had made some 4 tons of it," he noted. "We need to know what is the true end figure. That is the real story," Butler said. The UN said October 1 that Butler had sent a letter to Ritter reminding the former UNSCOM inspector that in talking publicly about confidential aspects of the Special Commission's work, he was in violation of the contract he signed with the UN. Butler asked Ritter to stop revealing confidential UNSCOM information. The secretary general agreed with the letter, UN spokesman Eckhard said. Butler said that while he defended Ritter's right to express his point of view, especially his reasons for resigning, "what has made it particularly sad for me is that ... in some cases they have involved revealing information that he shouldn't have revealed because it was obtained in the course of his official duty." Partly as a result of what Ritter has been reportedly saying, the details of the Israeli Government's cooperation with UNSCOM -- especially relating to the discovery of Iraq's methods of concealing information and equipment from UN inspectors -- have been spelled out in several newspaper stories. Butler emphasized that all Security Council resolutions on Iraq are international law, ask all states to cooperate with UNSCOM, and give the weapons inspectors the right to approach states to ask for information that could help the commission in its work. More than 50 nations, almost one-third of the UN membership, has worked with UNSCOM, he said. Israel is one of them, Butler said. It is UNSCOM "policy not to go into the details of that relationship and to respect the confidentiality of those contacts between us and member states ... that increases the possibility we'll get the help we need and reduces the possibility of unnecessary embarrassment," Butler added. "I would have preferred the fact that Israel has provided some information to us not be mentioned. We prefer to do these things discreetly," he said. Butler quickly pointed to Iraq as the state "first and foremost" who is expected to cooperate with UNSCOM. "If you ask me what is the single central thing we need to get this job done, it is what it has always been: We need the truth from Iraq; we need full disclosure from Iraq," he said. "That is a far more important issue than any bits and pieces of information that any other state has given us, whether Israel or anyone else," he said. The UNSCOM director also commented on press reports that Iraq had three or four "implosion devices" that lacked only cores of enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. "I am not going to go into the range of technical information we have. But I just put this to you: Does anyone in this room honestly think that if we had information that Iraq had three partly fabricated nuclear weapons that we wouldn't have called that to the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or put it on the table of the Security Council," Butler asked. "Of course we would have. Have you seen us do that. No," he said. The 18-member Special Commission completed a three-day session at the end of September to prepare a report to the Security Council on the inspectors' work. The report, which is expected to be released the week of October 4, "will be viewed as a very important, worthwhile document," Butler also said. (For more information on this subject, contact our special Iraq website at: http://www.usia.gov/iraq)
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