Iraq, UN Inspectors Sign Accord for Better Cooperation

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Iraq, UN Inspectors Sign Accord for Better Cooperation

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Iraq and the UN weapons experts have sign a cooperation accord to win more time for disarmament process, at the time when a key report by the arms inspectors to the UN Security Council is just a week away and the United States is pressing its warning that time is running out for Baghdad's compliance.

The 10-point statement, in which Iraq pledged to boost cooperation with the United Nations, was signed on Monday following two days of talks in Baghdad between UN chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei with Iraq's top disarmament officials.

In a show of its sincerity in cooperation with the United Nations, Baghdad in the two-day talks made apparent concessions, vowing to encourage weapons scientists to accept private interviews with UN inspectors and respond to questions on its Dec. 7 arms declaration to the Security Council.

Both Iraqi officials and the UN arms experts were seeking to keep the inspections on the right track, even after Blix's crucial report to the UN Security Council about Iraq's weapons programs due on Jan. 27.

Private Interviews Encouraged>

Among the 10 points, Iraq agreed to encourage Iraqi scientists to be interviewed by UN inspectors in private, which has been advocated by the United States as a most effective way to expose Iraq's cover-up for prohibited weapons programs.

"Persons asked for interviews in private will be encouraged to accept," Iraq promised in the joint statement.

Since the UN experts resumed their hunt for banned weapons in Iraq on Nov. 27, only two scientists have been interviewed by the inspectors. Both of them have insisted on the presence of Iraqi minders and refused to be questioned in the inspectors' offices in Baghdad, let alone abroad.

Officially Baghdad does not oppose private or out-of-border interviews by the inspectors with Iraqi scientists, maintaining that it was up to each scientist himself to decide. But the scientists' unanimous refusal of such interviews has raised the inspectors' eyebrows with the suspicion that the scientists might be intimidated.

But Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said on Monday that UN arms inspectors could begin conducting interviews with Iraqi scientists outside Iraq "very soon."

Upon arrival in Athens, Greece, after two days of talks in Baghdad, Blix said it is likely that Iraqi scientists could be interviewed in Cyprus and "It may well come very soon."

In Monday's statement, Baghdad also promised to offer another list of "persons engaged in the various disciplines" to supplement a previous list of Iraqi scientists, which Iraq handed over to the inspectors in late December but the UN inspectors have termed it incomplete.

Pro-active Response to Disputes

Acting in line with the newly-adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1441, Iraq submitted a massive 12,000-page dossier on its arms programs to the Security Council and the inspectors on Dec. 7 in a bid to prove its claims that there is no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

US and British officials have indicated that Iraq's mammoth declaration contained "obvious omissions" and "holes," which may constitute a "material breach" of Iraq's obligations stipulated in Resolution 1441.

Before the talks with Iraqi officials, Blix had said his key message to Baghdad would be that Iraq's arms declaration did not contain new evidence to verify its claim that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed and many questions were left unanswered.

In the joint statement following the crucial talks, Iraq also agreed to answer questions arising from Baghdad's 12,000-page weapons declaration to the UN Security Council and discuss some other specific issues.

"Iraq agreed to continue technical discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency to clarify issues, regarding aluminum tubes, alleged uranium importation and the use of high explosives, as well as other outstanding issues," the statement said.

Just before the talks that ElBaradei termed as a "last-ditch effort" to gain Baghdad's pro-active cooperation, the UN inspectors had discovered a dozen of empty chemical warheads and more than 3,000 pages of documents supposedly linked to Iraq's banned nuclear weapons programs, both of which were reportedly not covered by Iraq's declaration.

While denying these findings were linked to prohibited arms programs, Iraq said it has appointed its own inspection team to "undertake an investigation and comprehensive search to look for similar cases at all locations" and will report the final results.

Iraq also gave a response to a UNMOVIC request for a number of documents by handing over some and giving clarifications regarding others, according to the joint statement.

Inspectors to Report Unfinished Job

The two chief UN inspectors indicated on Monday that they had not obtained enough evidence to come to a conclusion on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and would report to the Security Council that their mission in Iraq has not finished.

"We are not those who will decide but we do not have enough evidence to have the Iraq file closed," Blix said after talks in Athens on Monday evening with George Papandreou, Greek foreign minister and current president of the European Union Council of Ministers.

"We do not know whether what we are seeing is pieces of ice or the entire iceberg," he said, avoiding commenting categorically on the outcome of the inspectors' job in Iraq.

ElBaradei, who also attended the meeting, told reporters that "we will report to the Security Council that the inspection is in mid course."

Earlier in the day, Blix said their talks with Iraqi disarmament officials in Baghdad "have solved a number of practical issues, not all."

"On the substantive issues relating to anthrax, VX and a number of Scud missiles, we have not discussed. That is to be discussed some time in the future," he told reporters at the inspectors' headquarters in Baghdad shortly after the announcement of the joint statement.

"Today was just not the time for substantive issues," he added.

Divided Security council over Iraq

But time is running out, the United States and Britain warned.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday urged the UN Security Council not to shrink from its responsibility of dealing with a regime bent on developing dooms day weapons when its members meet next week to determine what to do.

"We cannot be shocked into impotence because we're afraid of the difficult choices ahead of us," he said in a speech to the Security Council ministerial meeting on counter-terrorism.

Before the meeting, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters that "time is running out for (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein" and the inspectors' upcoming report to the Security Council would be of great importance.

But the other three permanent council members, China, Russia and France, as well as non-permanent member Germany, expressed different views on the Iraqi disarmament issue.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, in a meeting with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov, stressed that continued efforts should be made to seek a political resolution within the UN framework and the authority of the United Nations be jointly defended.

Ivanov said Russia shares a similar stance with China on the issue and it is willing to work with China to push for a political solution to the Iraqi crisis.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin maintained that nothing today justifies a war on Iraq, and he didn't rule out the possibility that France would exercise a veto over a second Security Council resolution authorizing military action.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also warned that a war on Iraq would greatly undermine the global fight against terrorism, reiterating his country's strong opposition to a military action against Baghdad.

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