UNMOVIC Bids Adieu, Warns of Further Iraq Chemical Attacks

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.N. Security Council voted Friday to shut down an international WMD monitoring team, even as the U.N. inspectors hailed their prewar efforts in Iraq as a success (see GSN, June 18).

The Security Council’s vote to dissolve the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission — unanimous, except for the abstention of Russia — came more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that was predicated on eliminating a WMD threat.  In the years since the invasion, U.S. inspectors have failed to turn up evidence of any active unconventional weapons programs.

In an enormous report on UNMOVIC activities released last week, the inspection body argued that the intervening years since military forces rolled into Iraq have validated the utility of the U.N. monitoring system used there.

“Despite some skepticism from many areas within the international community, in hindsight, it has now become clear that the U.N. inspection system in Iraq was indeed successful to a large degree, in fulfilling its disarmament and monitoring obligations,” according to the report, posted to the body’s Web site.

UNMOVIC found no evidence of biological or chemical weapons activity in Iraq during inspections between November 2002 and March 2003.  After March 2003, the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group took over inspection duties.  UNMOVIC was not responsible for looking into nuclear activities. 

The team was created as a successor to the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, a group deployed by the Security Council following the 1991 Gulf War to investigate and destroy the surprisingly expansive chemical and biological weapons programs discovered after that conflict.  In addition, UNSCOM dismantled Iraq’s ballistic missile program.

In a joint letter addressed to the president of the Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett stated that “all appropriate steps” have been taken since 2003 to ensure all of Iraq’s unconventional weapons have been destroyed or “rendered harmless.”

The letter does not note the failure of U.S. and British inspectors to find any active WMD programs.

Despite the fact that UNMOVIC failed to find WMD activity prior to the invasion of Iraq, it was also unable to completely allay concerns.  Mistrust of Iraqi declarations became endemic, and “it became almost impossible for Iraq to provide convincing evidence that would remove doubt that even more evidence remained undisclosed,” the final report states.

In a little over three months of activity the U.N. inspection teams conducted 731 inspections at more than 400 sites, 88 or which had never before been examined.  More time would have been useful, however, the team stated in its final conclusions.

“Had UNMOVIC not been under such stringent time constraint, the inspections could have been more detailed and thorough and many issues which emerged could have been pursued to a conclusion allowing greater confidence in the inspection process,” it said.

Since leaving Iraq, UNMOVIC inspectors have analyzed satellite imagery of sites with sensitive equipment in Iraq.  UNMOVIC chief Demetrius Perricos cautioned the Security Council that there remain questions about dual-use items there.

More than 7,900 items that were at known sites in Iraq as of March 2003 are now unaccounted for, he told the 15-member council on Friday.

“Through satellite imagery, UNMOVIC has identified a number of buildings and structures that used to contain such equipment that had been demolished or damaged by 2004.  The fate of this equipment, which can be utilized for the production of small/single batches of chemical weapons or their precursors, and the fate of equipment in buildings that remained intact is unknown,” the team said in its final quarterly report.

Noting that insurgents in Iraq have recently employed industrial chemicals such as chlorine in crude bombs, Perricos warned that terrorists could obtain more toxic materials (see GSN, June 4).

“The possibility of nonstate actors getting their hands on other — more toxic agents — is real,” Perricos said in a speech before the council.

David Albright, who worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency team looking into the Iraqi nuclear program in the 1990s, called the decision to draw the curtain on UNMOVIC “shortsighted.”

Both the U.S. and the Iraqi governments were committed to eliminating the team, said Albright, now president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

On the U.S. side, he said hostility stems from the UNMOVIC position on Iraqi WMD programs in the run-up to the war and its imagery analysis following the invasion.

“They embarrassed us several times after the war,” Albright said.  UNMOVIC inspectors found that “a lot of dual-use items, whole factories, were disappearing,” during the U.S. military occupation in Iraq.  “I see it as a very vengeful move on the part of the U.S. and Iraq.”

Once UNMOVIC staff contracts expire on July 10, the more than $10 million of Iraqi oil money that paid for the 34-member staff and activities are due to revert to the Iraqi government.

It is in the U.S. interest to maintain the weapons inspection expertise at the United Nations, Albright said.  “The people will basically just be fired.”

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert with the New America Foundation, agreed.  Rather than eliminating the entire 34-member staff, reducing the number of inspectors and creating a sort of “reservists” model could be beneficial,” he said.

Experienced inspectors could offer support and advice in Biological Weapons Convention compliance and efforts to control sensitive missile technology.  Training exercises could be one way to keep a pool of reserve inspectors occupied, Lewis said.

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