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30 January 2003

Armitage Says Iraq Has Failed to Comply with U.N. Resolutions

(Congressional Report, January 30: Iraq Disarmament Compliance) (570)
Based on two recent reports from U.N. weapons inspectors, Iraq is in
material breach of U.N. resolutions requiring disarmament of an array
of chemical and biological weapons and outlawed long-range ballistic
missiles, says U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
It is Iraq's responsibility to prove compliance with U.N. Security
Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1441, Armitage said, and the U.N.
inspectors are there to conduct verification. Armitage and Ambassador
John Negroponte, the U.S. permanent representative to the United
Nations, testified January 30 before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, which convened the hearing to evaluate the two weapons
inspections reports presented to the U.N. Security Council January 27.
Armitage testified that the U.N. weapons inspectors are in Iraq to
verify disarmament compliance through a full and accurate weapons
declaration from the Iraqis and through comparable inspections.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar and Senator
Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the panel, opened their remarks
by saying that Iraq has failed to comply with UNSCR 1441 and that it
is in material breach of the terms of the resolution.
Negroponte told the committee that "we believe Iraq is not disarming.
Iraq has failed the tests set out in [UNSCR] 1441."
Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein agreed
in 1991 to the United Nations agreements that he would completely
disarm all weapons of mass destruction Iraq held in return for being
able to stay in power. "He hasn't done that," Biden said. "We're
enforcing a surrender document."
Armitage said Iraq has been given more than 12 years to disarm and
comply with U.N. resolutions. "He's got to make that choice in a
hurry," he said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to appear before the U.N.
Security Council February 5 in New York to lay out detailed
information on Iraq's failure to fully comply with current U.N.
resolutions and on weapons of mass destruction that have not been
accounted for by inspectors or the Iraqi declaration. Biden and
several other members of the committee asked if Powell might be able
to schedule an appearance with the committee, first, before his
appearance next week at the United Nations.
However, some senators questioned why the United States couldn't give
U.N. weapons inspectors more time to complete their inspections.
Senator Lincoln Chaffee, a Rhode Island Republican, said that with
increased international pressure and expanded U.N. weapons inspections
in Iraq, the danger posed by Saddam Hussein may have diminished. He
said some sections of the UNMOVIC (U.N. Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission) report by its chief inspector, Hans Blix,
mentioned cooperation from the Iraqi regime.
Negroponte said that the cooperation cited in the Blix report referred
to process and not to any substantive cooperation.
"The decision to go to war then is splitting a hair here, it seems,
over cooperation or lack of it," Chaffee said.
Senator Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, said President Bush has
defined the problem in such a way as to leave little room for debate.
But Armitage told the committee that over the next few weeks the
United States will engage in diplomacy to determine if there is a way
for peaceful resolution with Iraq, but it will be "weeks, not months."
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)