Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

7 March – Top United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council today that over the past month Iraq has displayed "active" or even "proactive" cooperation, which has allowed the inspection process to make significant progress, although a number of key disarmament tasks remained to be resolved.

Addressing a ministerial-level meeting of the Council, Mr. Blix cited in particular Baghdad's move to begin UN-supervised destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles, which had been declared by Iraq last year, but were later found to be outside the permissible range by UN experts.

"The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament - indeed the first since the middle of the 1990's," Mr. Blix said. "We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed."