08 March 1999
UNSCOM CHIEF: SECURITY COUNCIL UNITY ON IRAQI WEAPONS ESSENTIAL
(Butler says he did not approve spy operations) (1140) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent
New York -- The major obstacle in ridding Iraq of its banned chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles is a divided Security Council, not allegations that UN weapons inspectors were spies, the head of the UN special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi weapons (UNSCOM) says.
UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler also denied that he approved the use of UN weapons inspection teams as a cover for US spying on Iraq.
At a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations March 3, Butler said that he did not know of the installation of any US spying devices in Iraq during UNSCOM operations. "Nothing can be simpler. I know what I approved of and I know what I didn't approve of," he said.
"I always approved of things which I thought served our disarmament purposes; if they did not, I didn't approve of them," Butler added.
UNSCOM has been unable to work in Iraq since late last year. Iraq's refusal to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors resulted in US and British attacks on weapons installations in Iraq in December 1998. The Security Council has made no decision on how to proceed in the face of Iraq's defiance. It has set up a panel chaired by council member Ambassador Celso Amorim of Brazil to review the situation and make recommendations by April 15 on how to proceed.
The question and answer session with the Council on Foreign Relations was Butler's first public comments on the issue since the spying allegations appeared a few weeks ago.
Pressed about the consequences of such actions if they prove to be true, Butler rejected suggestions that the arms control regime set up by UNSCOM should be scrapped or that the Security Council should abolish the commission.
The biggest threat to the successful disarmament of Iraq is disunity in the Security Council, the UNSCOM chief said.
There is a "very difficult situation in the Security Council because it is the one thing it shouldn't be -- divided. The only beneficiary of a divided Security Council is a recalcitrant Iraq," the UNSCOM chief said.
The "core issue" still remains "the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq obtained and created," Butler pointed out. "Iraq is in defiance of the council today saying they don't want to do that any more ... that is a real issue."
"You don't throw out the whole regime we have developed for one flaw," Butler argued. "We have led the world in the practical, hands-on techniques for getting this job done and it has had brilliant results. The fact this stuff may have happened ... shouldn't lead to the throwing away of what we have done."
Butler pointed out that UNSCOM has received assistance from 40 nations since its inception in 1991.
UNSCOM staff "is sent by governments and some come from defense intelligence agencies. That is where their weapons experts come from," he pointed out. "If you want a weapons inspector, you don't ask for a clerk from the ministry of public health."
Rejecting suggestions that actions by UN weapons inspectors have been the cause of friction between Iraq and UNSCOM, Butler said, "let's get something straight: We faced a wall of deceit from Iraq. Iraq was obliged under the resolutions passed by the Security Council, which ... are international law, to tell us the truth about its weapons. It never did."
"Instead, it obstructed and concealed and put up a barrier against our legitimate attempts to find those weapons," he said. "Yes, we employed technologies to crack that wall of deceit. That's the perspective in which this has to be seen."
Butler noted that over the years he has received many suggestions from staff and governments on how to crack that wall of deceit and technologies that might be employed. "I rejected some because they would be the subject of potential misinterpretation. I wanted to keep this clean. And I am satisfied with that record," he said.
"If other people piggy-backed on ... us when they helped with some of those technologies, go ask them about it, but I didn't approve of that nor did my predecessor," he said.
What can be hurt by the allegations of spying under the cover of UNSCOM, Butler said, are the verifications regimes of arms control treaties.
"If people think that by entering in good faith verification of arms control treaties there is going to be this back-door stuff ... then we've got a serious problem," he said.
Butler said it is too early to assess what damage the news reports and an upcoming book by former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter will have on the future of the special commission.
Much "depends on the propaganda level Iraq will enter into," he said.
"Iraq has been saying for a long time you guys are a bunch of spies. That was never true. Never," Butler continued. "(Iraq) may take comfort from those allegations, which may be unfortunate."
Such news reports "might help them get themselves off the hook" of complying with international law, he pointed out.
Butler predicted that "we will get press out of Baghdad in the next couple of days saying, 'see, see we told you so. They always were spies.'"
"Those hostile to the disarmament of Iraq will clearly take comfort in this," he added.
Butler said that it is possible for Iraq to begin production of the banned weapons now that UN weapons inspectors are no longer in the country.
"Everything we know about their track record is that they are making hay while the sun is shining," he said.
"It's been five months since we've been looking at their biological and chemical laboratories and plants where equipment could be making aspirin on the assembly line before lunch, rinsed out over lunch and they can be making mustard (gas), VX or something after lunch," he said.
"We don't know and that's the tragedy. We're not there, we can't see," Butler said.
Butler speculated that Iraq threw out the UN weapons inspectors because UNSCOM was closing in on the weapons and programs Baghdad was still hiding.
He pointed out that UNSCOM "gave Iraq a final list of weapons of mass destruction of which we needed a final count ... a short list, but a real list, in the missile, chemical and biological field and they then threw us out."
"The logic of that behavior is that we were right and we were getting very close to precisely the things that they retained and that they had concealed and that they didn't want to give up," Butler said.
"That was our crime -- we were right, we were close and they threw us out," he said.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
