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10 December 2002

Security Council to Get Iraqi Weapons Declaration in Nine Days

(Editing of proliferation data under way, Blix says) (500)
By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent
United Nations -- The chief U.N. weapons inspector said December 10
that he expects to deliver a working copy of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction declaration and a "very preliminary assessment" of its
substance to the entire Security Council within nine days.
Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification,
and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) said, "we are now dealing with
taking out of the declaration things that could be risky from the
point of view of proliferation."
"We hope that we will have been through the main part of the document
-- which is about 3, 000 pages -- by Friday (December 13). The
bottleneck frankly is translation ... 500 pages of Arabic need to be
translated," Blix told journalists after a luncheon meeting with the
Security Council.
Blix said that UNMOVIC has asked the five permanent members of the
Security Council -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the
United States -- to have their experts advise the U.N. by December 13
on what sensitive matters they feel need to be edited out before
giving the working version of the Iraqi declaration to the entire
council.
"In the best case, by Monday, we will be able to have a working
version of the text of the main part, which we can share with all the
members of the council," Blix said. And if UNMOVIC's timetable holds,
by December 19 UNMOVIC will offer a "very preliminary assessment of
the substance" of Iraq's declaration.
UNMOVIC officials have not made any preliminary assessments on how
complete or thorough the Iraqi declaration is or whether the document
contains information Iraq has not previously provided the U.N., he
said. They are focusing on parts of the document that if made public
could be "cookbooks for proliferation."
UNMOVIC and the permanent members of the council are assessing the
information to be certain that any sections that could potentially
foster arms proliferation or that would contravene arms conventions
such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Chemical
Weapons Convention, and the Biological Weapons Convention are deleted
from the council's version.
One area that may be cut is the portion containing the names of the
foreign companies which have supplied materials for the weapons
programs.
Foreign suppliers are considered sensitive, the UNMOVIC chief said,
"for the reason that intelligence operations have sometimes been
obtaining information through the foreign suppliers about the Iraqi
program, and if they were to give the names publicly they would never
get another foreign supplier giving information."
Blix also said that UNMOVIC has put Iraq "on notice that we will ask
them for names of people who are active in the different (weapons)
programs" for interviews with U.N. inspectors who want to investigate
those programs.
The 12,000 pages of what Iraq says is a complete declaration of all
its weapons of mass destruction were turned over to officials of
UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Baghdad
December 7 and brought to U.N. headquarters December 8.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)