22 January 2003
Blix: No Sign of Proactive Cooperation from Iraq Yet
(Inspectors don't know if warheads are "tip of the iceberg") (620) By Judy Aita Washington File Staff Writer United Nations -- Returning to U.N. headquarters after meeting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, the chief U.N. weapons inspector said January 22 that Iraq had not begun to work proactively with the U.N. "If you ask are they proactive, I think so far I've said no, I don't think they've come to that stage yet," Hans Blix, head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), told journalists. Asked about how long he thought the inspection process could take, Blix did not give any timeline. With proactive cooperation from Iraq "then we should not need very much time." Without that cooperation "then it can drag out," he said. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were in Baghdad January 19-20 to meet with Iraqi officials on the inspection process. "We raised quite a number of issues with the Iraqis -- practical matters that we have encountered lately," Blix said, "and we obtained satisfactory answers on some of them and on some of them we did not." Blix noted that the Iraqis "have been prompt" in opening "practically all the sites" the weapons inspectors visited. One exception was a private house. "Less than satisfactory" have been attempts to interview Iraqi scientists in private without government handlers, the UNMOVIC chief said. During the meetings in Baghdad, Iraq said it would encourage such private interviews. "We'll see if that happens," Blix said. On January 27 UNMOVIC and IAEA will report to the Security Council on the status of the inspections, which began in late November, and Iraq's compliance with the November 8 Security Council resolution 1441 that calls for "serious consequences" if Iraq does not comply. Blix said that the inspectors "have not found any hidden large quantities of anything" so far. On the hidden cache of 11 empty chemical warheads found by the inspectors last week, Blix said they are possibly no longer usable but "should have been declared." Tests are still being conducted on a 12th warhead found at the same site, a bunker constructed in the late 1990s, he said. Contrary to Iraq's initial assertion that the warheads were included in the 12,000-page full, final, and complete declaration on its weapons of mass destruction given to the U.N. on December 7, the warheads were not accounted for in the document, Blix said. Now, he said, "the Iraqis are not really maintaining ... that they declared them. They are saying that they have overlooked this, and they have appointed a commission of inquiry which will look for further such 'forgotten stores,' as they say." "The question, of course, is, as I've said, are these just pieces of ice that are broken up, or are they the tip of an iceberg. So there are still questions," Blix said. Open issues relate to anthrax, VX nerve agent, and the number of remaining Scud missiles, he said. Iraq has also put "impossible conditions" on U2 surveillance flights UNMOVIC wants to undertake. "It is a question for the Iraqis to help providing evidence," Blix said, "and they simply say 'there ... is nothing left to this, and there is no evidence that we can produce. There are no more documents.'" "Well, the other day, we did find a batch of documents that happened to relate to laser. Maybe there are other documents somewhere else in private quarters. And will they find them? Will they present them in order to support the position that they have taken? That's what we need," the UNMOVIC chief said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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