Iraq non-committal on Blix

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), JAN. 31. As expected, the Iraqi Government- controlled media has fired salvos against the appointment of Mr. Hans Blix as the executive chairman of the new U.N. commission mandated to find and dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. So far, Iraq has not officially stated that it will not co-operate with Mr. Blix or his commission. Iraq's friends in the Security Council are pressing it to co-operate but Baghdad is apparently holding out till the commission's objectives become clearer.

Last week, Mr. Blix, former Swedish Foreign Minister and former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, won the unanimous approval of the Security Council to head the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), set up through a resolution passed on December 17 last year. UNMOVIC is mandated to re-start the process of tracking down and eliminating Iraq's potential in the field of chemical and biological warfare and its capacity to develop ballistic missiles. As such, it is a new incarnation of UNSCOM, the commission which carried out this task from the end of the Second Gulf War in 1991 till December 1998. UNMOVIC has yet to start its operations, the delay caused by the inability of the Security Council members to agree on the name of the executive chairman.

Mr. Blix's name was reportedly proposed by France, which, along with Russia and China, has been sympathetic to Iraq's position on the inspections and sanctions process. Surprisingly, the suggestion won the approval, perhaps reluctant approval, of the U.S. administration as well. The U.S. was apparently caught between its need to project Security Council unity on the subject of Iraq and its desire to have a hardheaded executive chairman.

The U.S. may have succumbed to pressure because it knows that it will be able to make a major input to the working of UNMOVIC. The executive chairman has to draw up a working plan, which will among other things, list what has been achieved thus far through the inspection regime and what remains to be done. There is disagreement within the Council as to what exactly has to be done to ensure that the disarmament of Iraq has been complete. At a base level, it is clear that the weapons actually produced, or the ingredients (precursors in the inspections jargon), will have to be dismantled.

The rest of the Security Council has so far gone along with the view that industrial and research facilities used for weaponisation purposes should be subjected to a strict monitoring regime even if they are not dismantled. However, there is far less unanimity when it comes to infrastructure or processes which can be put to dual uses. The U.S. administration has even refused to endorse the import of pencils for Iraqi school children as it fears that the graphite in the pencils can be used for military purposes. With such ambivalence about the scope of the ``discovery and dismantlement'' tasks, it will be difficult for any executive chairman to pinpoint what exactly needs to be done before Iraq can be declared weapons-free.

Mr. Blix takes up the task with a handicap because, when he was Director-General, the IAEA was seen to have been slipshod in its monitoring of Iraq's nuclear programme. Till 1991, the IAEA had regularly certified that Iraq, as a signatory to the Non- Proliferation Treaty, was weapons-free. However, after the Gulf War it was discovered that Iraq had gone much further towards the weaponisation of its nuclear programme than known till then. There will be constant references by U.S. sources to the IAEA's pre-1991 performance to remind Mr. Blix that he is on sufferance.

Jordan defies ban

Reuters reports from Baghdad:

Jordanian sympathisers have donated 3.2 million pencils to Iraqi students in defiance of the U.N. trade embargo, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.

The pencils were taken to the al-Qadissiya border crossing in Traibil in two trucks accompanied by a convoy of more than 200 cars, INA said yesterday. ``Every pencil signifies a sign of refusal by one Jordanian of the illegal sanctions against Iraq,'' Mr. Aida al-Dabbas, a leader of the Jordanian national mobilisation committee of solidarity with Iraq, told Reuters television.

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