Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix released a new report to the U.N. Security Council yesterday, asking council diplomats to keep the U.N. inspection team intact after he leaves his position at the end of this month (see GSN, June 2).

Blix told the council that months of inspections had prepared his staff to resolve some unanswered questions.  Despite a successful invasion, U.S. forces have yet to discover any of the suspected Iraqi WMD stockpiles that Washington used to justify the war in Iraq.

“It would be inadvisable to undertake any drastic overall reduction in the present cadre of staff,” Blix wrote in what will be his last quarterly report to the Security Council.  “In the months to come it may also be desirable that this staff engage in summarizing and digesting unique experience gained,” he added.

In the report, Blix said U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq at the end of last year and the beginning of 2003 did not find evidence of “continuation or resumption” of illicit weapons development.  The report noted, however, that many questions were left unanswered about previously known stocks of Iraqi weapons (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, June 3).

“The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was neither shortened by the inspections, nor by Iraqi declarations and documents,” the report says.

Blix’s report took special note of chemical weapons that were produced by Iraq but never accounted for.

“This assessment does not resolve the question regarding the total quantity of anthrax produced and destroyed by Iraq,” the report said.  Blix also addressed VX nerve gas, saying, “accounting issues remain concerning the chemical.”

The report also noted that two recently discovered Iraqi trailers containing laboratory equipment were not on Iraqi lists of prewar “legitimate vehicles.”  U.S. President George W. Bush has seized on the trailers as evidence of an illicit weapons program (Felicity Barringer, New York Times, June 3).

Nuclear Agency Restricted by U.S.

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency will be allowed to recover nuclear material looted from the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center in Iraq, but the group’s movement will be restricted by U.S. forces, Reuters reported today.  The officials will not be allowed on the main plant and their work is expected to take two weeks.

“The inspection will be confined to ‘Location C,’ the nuclear material storage facility where they will independently identify, verify, repack, seal and secure nuclear material,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.  “Location C is located near the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, but is outside the gate which encloses the main Tuwaitha site,” she added (Reuters/Jordan Times, June 3).

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