Security Council Begins to Consider Disbanding U.N. Team That Conducted Iraq WMD Inspections

U.S. and British diplomats have circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to formally disband the team of U.N. inspectors that once searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, June 4).

The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission was born as a successor to the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, a group that uncovered and destroyed Iraqi WMD programs following the 1991 Gulf War.

The text of the new proposal calls on the council to “terminate immediately the mandates” of the inspectors.  The proposal has received tentative support from the five permanent council members, the Times reported.  However, Russia has suggested that the commission, not the United States, should issue a final determination that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.

The team has not visited Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began in 2003, but it has operated with a skeleton staff from its New York City headquarters.

“Suddenly they got in a hurry,” said acting commission head Demetrius Perricos, speaking of the push to end his job.

Perricos urged the council to require Iraq to join all WMD-related treaties before dissolving the commission.  Iraq has not, for example, signed the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Should the council close the commission, it would also need to decide what to do with the inspectors’ massive files of WMD-related information, the Times reported.

“If you want the formula for VX, we have it here,” said commission spokesman Ewen Buchanan.  “We have, quite literally, the cookbooks for all the biological weapons, chemical weapons, the missile blueprints and designs, supplier information.”

“The archives must be handled prudently for risk of being utilized by proliferators,” said former commission leader Hans Blix (Nicholas Kulish, New York Times, June 18).

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