DoD News Briefing
Thursday, August 13, 1998 - 1:45 p.m. (EDT)
Presenter: Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD (PA)
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Q: Ken, Iraq is again refusing U.N. weapons inspectors access to sites. Is the U.S. going to let this stand? Is this going to stand?
A: The question is, is the U.N. going to let it stand? Iraq, what Iraq is saying is that it's not going to honor the agreement that was made with Kofi Annan earlier this year. The Secretary General came back and talked about the importance of this agreement. Iraq honored it for a while. Now it's saying that it's not going to honor it. So this is something that the U.N. will have to consider and react to. Right now, there is a representative of the Secretary General in Baghdad talking with Terak Aziz and I believe others about the next steps. I don't know what those talks will produce if anything. But the next step would be for those... let those talks run their course. Mr. Shah, the special representative, would then return and either... would either return and brief Kofi Annan in person or talk to him by phone before he comes back and then the U.N. Security Counsel will have to decide what to do based on his report.
Q: Is the U.S. considering backing up this diplomacy with force at all?
A: Right now, the U.N. has to decide how to enforce the agreement that Kofi Annan reached with Saddam Hussein. And that's the stage we're at right now. We have a very significant force in the Gulf ready to protect our interests and to protect the U.N.'s interest if necessary. But right now, this is an issue for the U.N. to resolve. The integrity of the Security Counsel is at stake. The integrity of the U.N. is at stake here. And I think this is an affront to every country that sits on the Security Counsel today.
Q: What would trigger another U.S. military build up?
A: I think it's premature to talk about that. This is a diplomatic dispute between the U.N. and Iraq. And the U.N. is working hard to resolve it.
Q: Are you saying that the U.S. would not take any action short of a U.N. resolution for some...
A: I am saying that this is a diplomatic dispute between the U.N. and Iraq right now. Obviously, we retain the right to protect our forces in the area should they come under threat.
Yes.
Q: I don't understand what makes this one a diplomatic dispute when every other time, the U.S. military has directly gone to the scene, making it a military scenario.
A: First of all, we're in the scene. We have now 23,000 people in the Gulf. Since we last talked about the numbers of people there, an amphibious ready group has arrived on a previously scheduled deployment to the Gulf. So, we have 23,000 people there. We have very significant combat force, 165 aircraft, we have a large number of cruise missiles and we have, now, Marines in the area. So, our force is significant. It's highly ready. It's exercising every day in the area.
The issue here is integrity of the U.N. Security Counsel and its ability to negotiate and maintain agreements between the Secretary General of the U.N. and another country. That's what's at issue here. That's why Secretary General Annan has sent somebody to Baghdad to negotiate over the terms of getting inspectors back in to doing their job. The point here is whether or not Saddam Hussein is going to honor a Security Counsel agreement, personal agreement, between Iraq and Kofi Annan to allow the inspectors to do their work. It's only through doing their work that the inspectors will be able to certify whether or not Iraq has met the terms for ending the sanctions that's been placed against it.
Yes.
Q: I recall that the most recent crisis in the spring, the U.S. position was that as long as these inspections were not going on, that the inspectors were actually getting further and further away from their goal of certifying that he's free of weapons of mass destruction. Is there any period of time in which some action would need to be taken? Obviously, if the inspectors aren't there, he can do things as far as these weapons go that...
A: That is certainly true. And that's why it's important for the U.N. Security Counsel to find a way to get the inspectors on the ground. Every time there's an interruption in the inspections, it leads to suspicions around the world and certainly by members of the Security Counsel that the inspections are being interrupted because Iraq has something to hide. If they have something to hide, it means that they're far away from meeting the terms of the U.N. mandate that requires them to abolish their weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and their ability to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. This is why the U.N. Security Counsel and the members of the Counsel take very seriously this affront to the Security Counsel and this violation of the agreement that had been reached earlier with Kofi Annan.
Yes, Pat.
Q: Referring again to the situation earlier in February and March, the question was raised as to whether military action to enforce the agreement could be taken absent a new U.N. action, as I recall, the U.S. government position at that time was that the U.N. had already spoken, there was a deal in place and that the United States government could decide to take military action to enforce the existing agreement. How does that differ from the circumstance now?
A: Well, I'm not sure that there is a huge difference, but right now, the play, the drama here is between the U.N. Security Counsel and Iraq. It's the Security Counsel that has been, in a sense, jilted by Iraq's refusal to adhere to the agreement that was reached with Kofi Annan earlier this year.
Q: Just to follow that, if the Security Counsel decides that it is now satisfied as a result of these negotiations, that the Iraqis are in compliance, is the United States satisfied in that case?
A: I think it's highly unlikely that the Security Counsel will determine that. If you look at the statements that have been made by other members of the Security Counsel, every time, they're very concerned about this. And they consider this a violation of an agreement that was made with Kofi Annan and they consider this an affront to the Security Counsel. Every time Saddam Hussein has broken off the inspections and has tried to spurn the Security Counsel, he has succeeded in unifying the forces of arms control against him. He succeeded in unifying people behind the need to take continuing action to remove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. That's the issue here. That's what the Security Counsel has focused on and that is what has been the progress toward eliminating those weapons of mass destruction has been slowed by this action by Saddam Hussein. Now the Security Counsel has to decide what to do.
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Q: Could I have a quick return to Iraq?
A: Yes.
Q: I'm trying to work out here, what you seem to be saying is there's no difference really between the American response to Iraq's refusal to comply with U.N. inspectors last year and early this year with their refusal, with the same Iraqi refusal now. And yet, when you look at it in public, there is a very big difference in the American response. The difference is that then, it was a major military threat or threat of military reprisal. And now, you're simply referring everybody back to the U.N. There is, on the surface there, a big difference. Can you explain whether there is a difference or there isn't? It seems to me there is.
A: Last fall, Iraq made public threats to shoot down U-2 aircraft and took other actions that led us to believe that they were trying to shoot down planes participating in OPERATION SOUTHERN WATCH. As you know, planes from three nations participated in OPERATION SOUTHERN WATCH. In response to those threats, we sent a carrier into the Gulf and took other steps to augment our forces there. That was clearly a threat directed specifically against United States forces in the Gulf. This situation is a violation of an agreement between the Secretary General of the United Nations and Iraq. And what's at stake here is the integrity of the U.N. Security Counsel and its ability to enforce or carry out its own mandates. And that's why Secretary General Kofi Annan has sent his representative, Mr. Shah, to Iraq where he is today negotiating with Iraqi officials, trying to get the inspections back on track.
Q: (Inaudible)
A: Not that I'm aware of, no.
Q: (Inaudible) was largely, was also because of the threat to the rest of the world posed by Iraqi biological weapons?
A: That build up, that threat continues because the international community has not yet been able to prevail in convincing Iraq of the importance of dismantling its entire chemical and biological weapons arsenal and productive capability. That's what this whole dispute is about. That's why it's so important to the United Nations. That's why it's so important to the Security Counsel. And that's why the U.N. Secretary General has a representative in Baghdad today talking to the Iraqis.
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Press: Thank you.
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