27 January 1999
US BACKING PROPOSAL FOR THREE PANELS TO STUDY IRAQI DATA
(Canadian plan would get council moving on future plans for Iraq) (1190) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- The United States is supporting a Canadian proposal in the Security Council for a series of panels to assess the mass of data on Iraq compiled since the end of the Gulf War. The panels would be a first step in helping council members decide how to proceed on such contentious issues as Iraq's disarmament and sanctions. Talking with journalists outside the Security Council chambers January 27, US Ambassador Peter Burleigh said that "as far as the United States is concerned, the Canadian text is acceptable and it is a good basis for the council to make a decision on this point and move ahead." The council has been unable to proceed with disarming Iraq since Baghdad suspended cooperation with the UN Special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi weapons (UNSCOM) in 1998, bringing on air strikes by the US and Britain. The proposal by Canada -- one of 10 non-permanent members of the 15-member council -- calls for panels on disarmament, humanitarian issues, and POWs and missing Kuwaiti property and archives, each under the chairmanship of the current council president, Ambassador Celso Amorim of Brazil. Those three panels would provide an expert assessment of the current situation in Iraq which council members would then use in deciding how to move ahead. The most problematic panel is the one on disarmament, which Canada suggested should be composed of UNSCOM, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala. Russia, for one, objects to UNSCOM and has been calling for the removal of UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler. Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler said that "what we are talking about is procedure. We are not now negotiating what is going to happen in Iraq; but what we are talking about is how to get to a discussion of what's going to happen in Iraq." The mechanism is designed to allow the panels to establish a baseline, analyze the body of knowledge that already exists, and bring recommendations to the council "to then get on with deciding what kind of disarmament and arms control and verification mission we need in Iraq," Fowler said. At some point the council "will, of course, engage in a discussion of the future of UNSCOM or whenever it is, but at the moment we can't even do that," the Canadian envoy said. "What we're trying to do is build a bridge so we can assess this great body of knowledge -- seven years of work by UNSCOM. ..." The panel on humanitarian issues would be made up of officials from the UN Office of the Iraq program, the Security Council's Sanctions Committee and UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Sergio Vierra de Mello. The panel would assess the current humanitarian situation in Iraq and make recommendations on measures to improve the situation in Iraq. The third panel -- assessing Iraqi compliance relating to prisoners of war, Kuwaiti property and Kuwaiti archives -- would consist of the director of the UN Office of the Iraq Program and advisers from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The panels, Burleigh said, "are the way to go now because there is a deep division in the council, as you know, and going to the longer-term questions now is not useful." "There is not a consensus about (the future) but there could be about these shorter-term proposals, including the panel assessment, which we think is a good idea," Burleigh said. "I would hope that most of the council would agree to go ahead and do that soon," the ambassador said. "It's the longer-term issue which we will have to get to at some later point but ... there is close to total consensus that we need a baseline study with regard to the weapons of mass destruction program." Amorim plans to meet privately with delegations over the next days to try to bridge the differences over the composition of the disarmament panel. One indication of the deep division in the council is a suppression of the latest report by UNSCOM. The commission presented to the council a 262-page report on its work in Iraq and the state of the UN disarmament program in Iraq. However, Russia demanded that the report not be distributed within the United Nations or to the press. Normally reports are made public soon after being given to the council. According to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, UNSCOM said that Iraq is still actively trying to conceal past and present weapons programs. It reported that concealment efforts continue to be supplied to UN weapons inspectors by Iraqis outside the country and others who have dealt with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over the years. UNSCOM's latest report, as well as previous reports, said that Iraq's biological weapons program is considered to be the most suspicious. From 1991 to 1995, Iraq said that it never tried to manufacture germ warfare agents or conduct research. Nevertheless, in 1995, after receiving numerous previously concealed documents, UNSCOM confronted Iraq with evidence of huge imports of material used to grow toxins and Baghdad subsequently admitted that it had made anthrax and botulinum. "To assess the quality of any biological agent over time requires knowledge and confidence in that knowledge. This includes the physical state of the agent, e.g. liquid or dried, with or without stabilizers, storage conditions of the filled weapons or bulk agent, e.g. temperature, humidity, containers, etc.; tests done on the agent before and after filling and results of such tests. None of this information on Iraqi weapons is available to the commission," the UNSCOM report said. The report also said that UNSCOM "has recently received information from multiple sources identifying organizations that direct and implement the Iraqi concealment effort. While the information from these sources differs in some minor details, it agrees on several major points: The highest level of concealment related decisions are made by a small committee of high-ranking officials. The presidential secretary, Abed Hamid Mahmoud, chairs this committee." "The committee directs the activities of the unit which is responsible for moving, hiding, and securing the items prescribed by the commission," the report said. "The Special Security Organization plays a key role in the operation of this unit and in tracking and surveillance of commission activities." UNSCOM also said that "Iraq claims to have produced, filled, deployed, and unilaterally destroyed 25 al-Hussein missile warheads intended for biological weapons use. No evidence exists to confirm the number of warheads produced as 25. Confusion reigns, even among Iraqi officials, over how many warheads were filled with BW agents." "At al-Nibal, the numbers and whereabouts of remnants of stainless-steel warheads agent containers, some with traces of Bacillus anthacis spores, contradict the account of weapons destruction" in the full, final, and complete disclosure provided by Iraq to the commission, the report said.
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