Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
FRANCE / IRAQ
Daily Press Briefing
Statements made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson
(Paris, November 9, 1999)
In response to your question--Does Iraq still present a threat?--what we have said and can only repeat is that we feel that the disarmament process concerning the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been moved forward to the point where today, this potential no longer represents a real threat for Iraq's neighbors. What is important today is to prevent a possible rearming of Iraq, which is why we are working in New York to re-establish a certain unity of views, a certain consensus, within the Security Council.
(You say that Iraq no longer represents a threat to the security of the region, because the disarmament process is more or less finished....)
I said that Iraq's capacity for mass destruction is today essentially dismantled, to the point where this capacity no longer represents a danger for its neighbors.
(How can you be so categorical when there are no more international inspections and when there have been no observers inside Iraq since December of last year? How do you know that Iraq has not regained this capacity?)
What has changed during recent months in Iraq, without inspectors to give us the answers? That's a good question. We are the first to point out the dangerous consequences of the continuation of the current situation. That said, the opinion of all international experts, wherever they are from, is that things could not have changed within a few months. We are basing our position on the opinions of competent experts.
(The Iraqi Minister of Information was in Paris last week to attend the UNESCO Conference. He called upon his friends, including France, to move. He was convinced that, for political reasons, the United States does not want to lift sanctions, regardless of the situation. He asked his friends to take the initiative of no longer respecting the embargo. In the light of what the Minister said yesterday, is there a possibility that some countries, including France, may not respect the embargo?)
France's position has always been, and will remain, one of strict respect for international law, meaning all the U.N. resolutions and nothing but the U.N. resolutions. We have always worked in that spirit and will continue to do so. Today, on a concrete level, we are not standing around with our arms crossed. Our objective remains the adoption of a global resolution and we hope that this global resolution will have the unanimous support of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. That is what we are working on.
(Yes, but the Minister said yesterday that sanctions against Iraq were no longer justified as they were in the beginning. If, in the analysis of the French administration, these sanctions are no longer justified, is it only for the sake of respecting U.N. resolutions?)
Yes, we feel that the time has come to consider lifting sanctions in a certain number of areas, notably sanctions concerning goods for civilian use. That is the spirit of the draft resolution that we are working on. That is what the Minister is thinking of, what he is working on and it is a step that fully respects international law.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
