U.S. plans to ignore new Iraqi offer on inspectors

Reuters
August 19, 2002
By Evelyn Leopold

The United States, which holds this month's U.N. Security Council presidency, said on Monday the 15-member body had no plans to discuss the latest Iraqi offer to resume discussions with the United Nations on weapons inspections.

But diplomats said some council members might bring it up anyway, even if parts of the letter reiterated Iraq's previous position that U.N. arms experts would have to discuss in advance what they were looking for before searches for weapons of mass destruction could resume.

However, there is virtually no chance the council, divided for years on Iraqi policy, could take a position on the letter. A previous invitation for chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to come to Baghdad was rejected two weeks ago by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan because it placed similar conditions on the arms experts.

"Currently there is no plan to discuss the letter," a U.S. spokesman said of the six-page document from Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, which sharply criticized Washington for its "brazen interference" in the work of the United Nations.

Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction are the main reason President Bush has given for a "regime change" in Baghdad, a euphemism for overthrowing President Saddam Hussein.

At issue is Iraq's insistence that talks with Blix focus on a U.N. evaluation of what remains to be done in the investigation of Baghdad's alleged nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic weapons programs.

But a 1999 Security Council resolution says the inspectors cannot determine "key remaining disarmament tasks" until they are back on the ground to see what happened since they left in December 1998, on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign.

Letter not very promising
James Cunningham, the U.S. deputy ambassador, told reporters, he had just received the full text of the letter, sent to Annan on Thursday. "My initial reading of it didn't lead me to think it was very promising but we are looking at it and will have a considered view later," he said.

In the letter Sabri said, "We reaffirm our offer of a further series of technical discussions in order to evaluate what was accomplished in the preceding phase and to consider how to deal with the issues on the basis of outstanding questions."

He said Blix and his teams would be "entirely free to raise all the issues that it deems necessary... and to establish rules making it possible to lay a common foundation for the following phase of monitoring and inspection activities."

The letter also outlined Iraq's grievances since 1991, when inspections were set after the Gulf War, and said the council did not appear to take any steps toward resolving all issues necessary to lift sanctions, imposed after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Annan, who is vacationing in his home country of Ghana, studied the text over the weekend and had no comment on it at this time, his spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

The secretary-general advised Sabri in an Aug. 6 letter that he expected a formal invitation for the inspectors to return to Iraq. He said Baghdad should comply with the terms laid down by the Security Council that call for a minimum of 60 days to examine the state of Iraq's banned weapons programs.

After meeting Sabri in July for the third time this year on the inspection controversy, Annan made clear he personally would not participate in further talks unless Iraq showed willingness to let the inspectors return.

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