The United States plans to introduce next week a U.N. Security Council resolution to lift sanctions against Iraq, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, April 24).

The decision to introduce the resolution, made during a meeting of top Bush administration national security advisers earlier this week, adopted for the most part a Defense Department proposal to eliminate all U.N. control over Iraq, rather than a step-by-step approach advocated by the State Department, according to the Post.

Many Security Council members have said, however, that the U.N. resolutions that established the sanctions regime in the early 1990s call for verifying Iraq’s disarmament of weapons of mass destruction prior to sanctions being lifted.  The Bush administration opposes the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq, saying they would only interfere with the U.S. WMD search efforts (DeYoung/Lynch, Washington Post, April 25).

The Security Council yesterday temporarily extended limited U.N. control over the Iraqi oil-for-food program until June 3.  The extension leaves the council with more than a month to determine the future of the sanctions regime, the Financial Times reported (Mark Turner, Financial Times, April 24).

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov yesterday called for a partial lifting of the sanctions against Iraq.

Russia supports a temporary lifting of sanctions “on goods that may be used for humanitarian problems in Iraq,” Ivanov said.  “An overwhelming majority of countries share this approach, therefore it is necessary now to make appropriate decisions,” he said.

Russia has also maintained a position that only the Security Council can fully lift the sanctions.  Prior to doing so, however, Russia wants U.N. inspectors to verify Iraq’s disarmament.

“As for the full lifting of the sanctions, this issue must be resolved on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolutions that were adopted earlier,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said (CNN.com, April 24).

WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, yesterday’s surrender of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz to U.S. forces could be invaluable to U.S. efforts to find evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, according to U.S. officials and Iraqi specialists.

Aziz could also help U.S. forces to learn the fate of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other members of his regime, they said.

“It’s almost as good as getting Saddam,” said Judith Yaphe, a senior research professor at the National Defense University.  “He’s the first real insider we’ve got.  This takes us someplace,” she said.

Even though Aziz might not know the precise whereabouts of banned weapons, “he may know a lot about de facto WMD programs,” a U.S. official said.  After the 1991 Gulf War, Aziz was involved in a committee formed to deceive U.N. inspectors and to find ways to covertly continue to develop weapons of mass destruction, according to Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and National Security Council official (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, April 25).

A number of U.S. military expert teams are preparing to travel to Iraq next week to assist efforts to disable and destroy any weapons of mass destruction that might be discovered, defense officials said.

The teams will have up to 100 members, with various teams focusing on different types of banned weapons, according to the New York Times.  Currently the teams consist of one nuclear team, one missile team and four chemical and biological teams.  The teams will also destroy any dual-use facilities, technologies and materials that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction, officials said.

One of the teams’ first tasks will be to establish a central base where discovered weapons could be stored for later destruction, the Times reported.  Such a base will probably be set up at the Muthanna State Enterprise, a former suspected Iraqi chemical weapons plant 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, officials said.

Although some experts doubt the United States will find any WMD evidence in Iraq, defense officials said they had to be prepared for the possibility that such weapons and materials are found.

“One of the challenges we have in planning is we don’t know the scope of the mission,” said Stephen Younger, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which leads the effort.  “If nothing is found, we’ll have nothing to eliminate.  But I’m reasonably confident that things will be found,” he said (William Broad, New York Times, April 25).

Almost three weeks after capturing the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center — the main facility in Iraq’s former nuclear program — the Bush administration still has not conducted an extensive inventory of the radiological materials housed at the site to make sure none have been stolen, according to U.S. military officials (see GSN, April 14).

Before the war, the Tuwaitha site contained almost 3,900 pounds of partially enriched uranium, more than 94 tons of natural uranium and small quantities of cesium, cobalt and strontium, according to reports compiled during the 1990s by the International Atomic Energy Agency.  The United States does not know if these materials remain secure, however, because it has not sent investigators to examine the site, defense officials said.  It is known, though, that the Tuwaitha complex was unguarded for days and that some looters were able to get inside, according to Pentagon and U.S. Central Command officials.

Interagency disputes are partially responsible for the delay in investigating the Tuwaitha complex, officials said.  Civilian Pentagon policy officials had originally proposed to conduct a complete inspection without the involvement of the IAEA, which would have required U.S. experts to break the agency’s seals placed on safeguarded nuclear materials, according to the Washington Post.  Other Pentagon and U.S. State Department offices responsible for treaty compliance, international organization and nonproliferation, however, objected to that proposal.

U.S. forces at the site have not broken any IAEA seals, said Lt. Col. Michael Slifka, a senior leader at the Central Command’s Sensitive Site Exploitation Planning Team.  He also said he did not know if others had broken the seals, however, because he has not been authorized to send an expert team to the site.

“For force protection reasons, because of the folks we’ve got there, we aren’t in a position to go inside,” Slifka said (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, April 25).

Bush Confident WMD Will Be Found

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that Iraqi officials and scientists have provided information that Hussein might have destroyed or hidden biological and chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the war. 

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some,” Bush said in an interview with NBC News.

Even so, Bush said he was confident U.S. troops would find evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts.  While the United States has only examined about 90 out of hundreds of suspect sites, those sites that have been examined have been designated as the most likely to conceal weapons, Bush said.

“And so we will find them,” Bush said.  “But it’s going to take time to find them.  And the best way to find them is to continue to collect information from the humans, Iraqis who were involved in hiding them,” he said.

Bush acknowledged, however, that U.S. credibility would be questioned until proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was discovered.

“I think there’s going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program,” Bush said (Stevenson/Sanger, New York Times, April 25).

Even if no such Iraqi weapons were found, it would not mean the war against Iraq was not justified, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today.

“People are now trying to suggest that somehow the decision to take military action was entirely conditional on subsequently finding chemical and biological weapons material,” Straw said.  “That wasn’t the case,” he said.

The international community “accepted that Saddam had these weapons and they posed a threat,” Straw said.    “Did we overstate the threat?  I don’t think we overstated the threat,” he added (Associated Press/MSNBC.com, April 25).

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