Tuesday, Jan 28, 2003
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By Sridhar Krishnaswami
Submitting his report to the U.N. Security Council today on the 60 days of weapon inspections in Iraq, Mr. Blix did not ask the Council for more time but argued that he shared the "sense of urgency'' to achieve Iraq's disarmament within "a reasonable period of time''. The U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, prior to the start of Mr. Blix's address, emphasised that the weapons inspectors should be given "a reasonable amount of time'' to complete their task.
`No evidence of new n-programme'
The Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad ElBaradei, in his report, argued that two months of inspections had not proved that Iraq had attempted to revive its nuclear weapons programme. "We have found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the elimination of the programme in the 1990s.'' The major focus was on what Mr. Blix said. The Head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission did not spring any major surprise in his 16-page report. He minced no words when he charged Iraq with not living up to the terms of the disarmament provisions of the world body. "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it,'' Mr. Blix said at the start of his address making the distinction in cooperation between substance and process. "It would appear from our experience so far that Iraq has decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, notably access. A similar decision is indispensable to provide cooperation on substance in order to bring the disarmament task to completion, through the peaceful process of inspection, and to bring the monitoring task on a firm course'', Mr. Blix said. He brought out a series of gaps or unresolved issues on Iraqi disarmament that included unanswered questions about the deadly nerve gas, VX, nutrients for biological agents such as anthrax, artillery shells filled with mustard gas and the 6,500 chemical bombs. The environment in Iraq may be "workable'' but Mr. Blix touched on several problems including the use of U-2 surveillance planes and harassment. At the outset, he argued that three questions remained unanswered: the extent of illicit weapons that might remain undeclared and intact from even before the 1991 Gulf War; what, if anything, was illegally produced or procured; and how the world could prevent weapons of mass destruction to be produced or procured in the future.
No hope: U.S. envoy
The first reaction from the United States was on expected lines with the country's top envoy to the U.N., John Negroponte, arguing that nothing that the inspectors said today "gives us any hope that Iraq will disarm''. But the top Iraqi envoy to the U.N. insisted that cooperation with the weapons inspectors had been total with Baghdad giving "immediate and unconditional access''. In Washington, the Bush administration reacted rather coolly to the idea that the weapons inspectors must be given more time; and Washington once again warned that "time is running out'' for the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, to come out clean. "When people say give them more time, the more time they get, the more time they get the runaround. Iraq is giving the inspectors the runaround,'' the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, remarked.
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