The U.N. Security Council plans to hold a meeting on Iraq tomorrow at the request of the Nonaligned Movement. It is to be the first public meeting on Iraq in the month-long debate over a U.S.-drafted resolution to add rigor to U.N. inspections in Iraq (see GSN, Oct 11).
“We believe that the proposed elements of such a resolution include issues that are of importance to the entire membership of the United Nations,” the movement wrote Friday in a letter to the council, referring to the still unofficial draft resolution by the United States — which demands Iraq’s disarmament, imposes new conditions for permitting weapons inspections and authorizes force in the event of Iraq’s noncompliance.
South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said this morning that the nonaligned wanted the meeting because “it seemed as if the United Nations was being asked to declare war on Iraq ... It is that fundamental.” If the reports of what is in the U.S. draft were true “it would have contradicted the [U.N.] Charter,” he added.
“The Security Council is on the verge of entering uncharted territory, on the verge on dealing with this peace and security matter in a different way than it has ever dealt with other matters of peace and security,” he said. “That is of interest to all 191 members. That is such an important step that it shouldn’t just be left to the views of 15 members.” Kumalo called the request “unprecedented in the sense that we want to express our views to the Security Council as they make this decision, that we see a decision that is unprecedented … We think they need to hear from all of us.”
“It’s not to take wind out of sails of the United States or anyone else, it is actually to reaffirm the principles of the United Nations Charter,” Kumalo said.
“We are frustrated by the fact that now it seems, that according to Dr. [Hans] Blix [head of the U.N. inspections in Iraq], that he now has the agreement with the government of Iraq … for him to go back with his inspectors and do the job he is qualified to do. And that is not happening. We want that to happen, because we want to bring closure to this issue,” he added.
Up until now, the United States and United Kingdom have been debating the issue behind closed doors with the other three veto-holding permanent members of the council: France, Russia and China. There has not even been much discussion with the 10 elected members of the council. Details of the U.S. draft resolution and the French counterproposal have leaked, but no draft resolution has been formally presented to the council.
Kumalo said the nonaligned are concerned that the 10 elected members of the council, most of whom are members of the movement, are “being isolated from the deliberations on this crucial issue ... It is therefore critical that the elected members of the Security Council be fully involved in the deliberations.” As of this morning, at least 60 countries had requested to address the council (Jim Wurst, UN Wire, Oct. 15).
Russia
Meanwhile, Russia is ready to support new U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iraq, but only to strengthen the inspections regime and not to authorize military action, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday.
Putin said he supports strengthening the inspection regime but that a new round of inspections — for which Iraq and U.N. weapons inspectors have already agreed on conditions — should begin immediately under existing U.N. mandates.
“Russia insists the situation around Iraq should be settled on the basis of U.N. resolutions that were passed before,” Putin said during a news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Putin indicated that he does not agree with U.S. and British demands for a new resolution calling for military action against Iraq if President Saddam Hussein were to fail to comply with inspectors.
“Baghdad has made concessions and agreed to receive a U.N. commission without any conditions,” Putin said. “Bearing this in mind, we believe that there are no formal and legal reasons for adopting any new U.N. resolution” (Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, Oct. 12).
France
France, another opponent of U.S. policy on Iraq, believes the United States must present its case before the U.N. Security Council before launching any attack on Iraq, diplomats said today.
France has called for two new resolutions — one for a strengthened inspections regime and, in the event that Iraq fails to comply, one to authorize military action. France has used its proposal mainly to persuade the United States to support its position, diplomats said. Both the United States and France believe they could muster the needed votes from the 15 U.N. Security Council members, according to the New York Times.
U.S. and French diplomats last week worked on a compromise involving language changes to the U.S. resolution that reduced the threat of military action to one of “serious consequences,” U.N. Security Council diplomats said. The two sides did not reach an agreement, however, because France does not believe the compromise meant that the United States would return to the U.N. Security Council before launching an attack, the diplomats said (Preston/Schmitt, New York Times, Oct. 15).
France opposes any U.S. unilateral military action against Iraq, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said yesterday, calling on the Bush administration to “remain faithful to the vision of collective security that rests on the law.”
“America seems tempted by the solitude of power,” Raffarin said in a speech before the Institute for National Defense Studies, a Paris think tank. “We cannot accept an intervention that is not a last resort, the final resort” (Associated Press/Globe and Mail, Oct. 15).
White House Split on Compromise
Bush administration officials disagree over how much of a compromise the United States’ should offer in the U.N. Security Council, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Oct. 10). The split has made official U.S. policy ambiguous and has confused diplomats, the Post reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been assured that he has President George W. Bush’s support to remove contentious language from the U.S. resolution as long as it retains the U.S. demand that Iraq fully comply with inspections and the U.S. pledge to impose “consequences” for failure to do so, sources said.
On the other side, Bush administration officials who advocate military action against Iraq, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believe that Bush will not support any major changes to the language of the resolution, the Post reported.
Since Bush’s speech before the United Nations Sept. 12, the administration has appeared to have two policies on Iraq — “one for New York and one for Washington,” a U.N. Security Council diplomat said. It is still unknown which is the official U.S. policy, the diplomat added.
Other diplomats have wondered whether Bush was ever serious about developing a solution to Iraq within the United Nations, the Post reported.
“We all want Washington to stay on the U.N. line, and having gotten us all fired up, not walk away,” said another Security Council diplomat. “Everybody knows we have to take up our responsibilities and make sure the Iraqis disarm. “We’re prepared to do so. (But) there is no point putting forward unrealistic proposals that don’t mesh with the U.N. system and what other members want” (DeYoung/Pincus, Washington Post, Oct. 14).
Iraq Holds Out on Agreements
Meanwhile, Iraq has refused to agree on terms set for U.N. inspectors to begin their work, diplomats said Saturday (see GSN, Oct. 9).
In a letter made public Saturday, Iraq did not meet a request to confirm agreements made last week by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. Instead, officials called for further discussions on logistical agreements, according to the New York Times.
The Iraqi letter from presidential adviser Gen. Amir al-Saadi was a reply to a letter sent two days earlier by Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Blix and ElBaradei had detailed what they understood to be the agreements made with Iraq on the terms of inspections.
Iraq had earlier said it was ready to readmit an advance team of U.N. inspectors Oct. 19, according to the Times. Al-Saadi, however, did not confirm Blix and ElBaradei’s letter, agreeing instead to comments he and Blix made after a series of meetings on terms for inspections held in Vienna (see GSN, Oct. 2). Other logistical difficulties “that might stand in the way of our future work” would be solved through “consultations,” al-Saadi said.
The Iraqi move demonstrated Hussein’s unwillingness to cooperate with inspections, U.S. officials said.
“We are not surprised that once again the Iraqis want to delay and deceive,” said Richard Grenell, spokesman for John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “We’ve had 16 resolutions and 11 years of playing this game, and it’s time the Security Council takes action” (Julia Preston, New York Times, Oct. 12).
In a second letter sent to U.N. inspectors Sunday, Iraq indicated that it does not object to inspections.
“I hope you did not interpret my letter as an objection,” al-Saadi wrote in his second letter to Blix and ElBaradei. Al-Saadi said his first letter had been “an explanation of our understanding for what we had agreed” concerning terms for inspections.
Al-Saadi’s second letter still does not provide requested confirmation, according to the New York Times. Diplomats at the United Nations and in Vienna have attempted to figure out the meaning of al-Saadi’s comments, the Times reported.
“I think they were saying, ‘Oops! We shot ourselves in the foot the first time,’” a U.N. Security Council diplomat said. “They tried to do better. But conciliatory is not good enough. What this letter does not do is just say yes” (Julia Preston, New York Times, Oct. 13).
Seven More Years for Saddam
In Iraq, voters overwhelmingly supported Hussein in a recent referendum that gave him, the only candidate, seven more years as president, Agence France-Presse reported today.
“By voting I’ve fired my gun at the head of (U.S. President George W.) Bush and his gang,” said 67-year-old Abdul Majid Janabi.
Several Iraqis voted with their blood after filling syringes, chanting “with our soul, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you Saddam,” AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com, Oct. 15).
United States Backs Away from Force
In a speech before a fund-raising dinner in Michigan yesterday, Bush indicated that he does not want to have to conduct military action against Iraq.
“The military option is my last choice,” he said. “My first choice is for Saddam Hussein to do what he said he would do and after 11 years disarm. It’s his choice to make” (Agence France-Presse, Oct. 15).
Other options short of military action, such as a coup within Iraq, are also being examined, U.S. officials said. So far, there are no signs of dissent within the Iraqi regime, according to senior military and intelligence officials. Some White House officials, however, have discussed a “pre-emptive” coup that might be launched by Iraqi officials afraid of what would happen to them after a U.S. attack, or a coup that might begin soon after the start of an invasion, according to the New York Times.
“There is no way to put a meaningful percentage on the chances of a coup,” a senior administration official said. “Remember, there were all sorts of experts in the intelligence community at the end of the Gulf War who thought Saddam would last six months after his defeat, and some of them are still writing our estimates. But you have to be prepared for the chance, and prepared to take advantage of senior defectors, even if there is not a full, successful coup.”
If Hussein were replaced in a coup with another hard-line military leader or another official from Hussein’s Baath Party, however, that alone would not satisfy the administration’s goal of disarming Iraq, Rumsfeld said.
“If Saddam Hussein were to wake up in the morning and decide he’d prefer to live elsewhere, and took with him his family and his regime — the small number of associates who obviously have been involved with his repression and the development of his programs — and left” it might be a solution, Rumsfeld said.
Iraq, however, would still have to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction, avoid connections with terrorists and be a peaceful neighbor, Rumsfeld added (Preston/Schmitt, New York Times).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
U.N. Resolution 687 (Sanctions Regime)
U.N. Resolution 1409 (“Smart Sanctions”)
U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Iraqi Sanctions Revisions
IAEA Iraq Action Team
Robert Gallucci, the dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, plans a teach-in to educate his students on U.S. policy toward Iraq. But Gallucci’s knowledge of Iraq is not just academic. He was the founding deputy executive chairman of the U.N. weapons inspection commission.
The career diplomat later dealt with weapons of mass destruction as U.S. assistant secretary of State for political-military affairs and as U.S. special envoy. National Journal’s Lee Michael Katz, who has covered the Iraqi weapons issue since 1991, interviewed Gallucci Oct. 4 and 8. The following edited excerpts reflect Gallucci’s assessment that President Saddam Hussein’s Iraq poses chilling dangers.
National Journal: Given your experience in dealing with Iraq, what should the ground rules be for the U.N. inspections?
Robert Gallucci: Iraq is not a normal place. Yet discussions of the ground rules sometimes appear to me otherworldly. They don’t take account of seven years of inspections in which the Iraqis lied repeatedly about their holdings in chemical, biological, nuclear weapons capabilities, and/or missiles; did what they could to obstruct inspections and showed absolutely no remorse.
This is not an inspection in Canada. One cannot allow sanctuaries or allow advance notice and still expect to find things people want to hide. It’s common sense. Yet we have colleagues in the [U.N.] Security Council, and in Paris and Moscow, who would settle for an inspections regime obviously inadequate to deal with a determined cheater.
We can expect this president to fulfill his responsibility to defend the citizens of the United States. That’s not unreasonable and was the message of his speech on Monday [Oct. 7].
NJ: So you’re backing President [George W.] Bush’s ultimatum of military action if inspections in Iraq don’t satisfy the United States?
Gallucci: Weapons of mass destruction alone, in the hands of Iraq, do not necessarily imply an imperative to invade. But having been attacked on Sept. 11, we need to be sure a regime such as Saddam’s does not transfer weapons to a group such as al-Qaeda. I’m looking for, in the American tradition, some way of dealing with these threats short of military force. One can design an inspections regime that would give us pretty high confidence.
If the Security Council won’t impose it or Saddam won’t accept it, how comfortable are you with leaving to chance whether Iraq transfers those weapons to al-Qaeda? Does that mean we have to act tomorrow morning? No. But I think we can conclude that under the circumstances, we will not tolerate that risk to the American people.
Saddam should have to accept this resolution immediately or be subject to the certainty, at some point, of military action to separate him from his weapons.
NJ: Actually, Iraq declared recently that Western reports of its weapons program are overblown. What’s your response?
Gallucci: It’s all lies. It’s a pack of lies. It’s a big pack of lies.
NJ: You were part of a Carnegie Endowment group suggesting that military forces accompany inspectors, an idea the administration has embraced. How would that work?
Gallucci: You don’t want to have a repeat of those cases in which a guy in a white shirt stands in front of the gate on which there’s a padlock, and tells a team of 30 U.N. inspectors in little blue hats and armbands that they can’t come in today. The inspectors haven’t any way of pushing the man aside and cutting the padlock off. That’s not what the United Nations does.
A military special operations unit could provide security for the U.N. team and also allow access where there’s only minimal resistance. You would force the Iraqis, if they wished to protect a site, to have a more substantial military presence — which would then provide a much clearer trigger for the use of force.
NJ: If there was deception during those seven years of inspections in Iraq, what makes you think that inspections can succeed this time around?
Gallucci: The Iraqis know a lot about how to deceive and harass inspectors, and about how to undermine the political basis for inspections. They learned a lot in those seven years. But inspectors, too, learned a lot about what works and what does not work against the Iraqis.
Remember, we did not have seven years of failure. What we had was enormous success initially in finding lots of things the Iraqis didn’t want us to find. We took apart their nuclear weapons program. We didn’t kill their weapons scientists, obviously, so they’re there to regenerate the program. We uncovered their biological weapons program. We destroyed incredible quantities of chemical weapons, many of their ballistic missiles. A lot of destruction went on.
But there was the watering-down of the inspections regime. There was a lack of support within the Security Council for threatening hostilities in the event of Iraqi resistance.
We in the United States, and anybody that wants serious inspections, do not wish to see that inspections regime regenerated. A weak inspections regime is worse than no regime. It gives to some a false sense of confidence; to others a cover under which these programs can be pursued.
NJ: Part of the debate over going to war with Iraq is that a threatened Saddam could unleash chemical and biological weapons against U.S. troops. Do you think he would?
Gallucci: In that circumstance, I don’t believe we should have any confidence Iraq would exercise restraint out of fear of American retaliation or some humanitarian concern. The worst can be quite bad. I don’t believe Iraq has nuclear weapons to use. I do believe with some high confidence that it has both chemical and biological weapons to use.... It’s a particular threat for Israel.
NJ: So basically, you’re saying that Saddam would quite possibly use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops and Israel?
Gallucci: We have to expect that to be one of the consequences of an invasion aimed at regime change. Since Saddam has used chemical weapons not only in the war against Iran, but also against his own people, these are for Saddam clearly usable weapons. For a humanitarian, there might still be a reason not to use weapons of mass destruction in order to spare his people the pain and suffering of an American retaliation. But I don’t believe anyone would put the label “humanitarian” around the neck of Saddam Hussein. “Vindictive, totalitarian terrorist,” maybe, but not “humanitarian.”
NJ: What weapons of mass destruction do you believe are in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal?
Gallucci: Chemical weapons — you could expect mustard [gas], sarin and VX. In biological weapons, you could expect toxins, botulinum toxin, bacteriological agents. You could expect anthrax and ricin.
Our concern is that they’ve gone beyond toxins and bacteriological agents to viral agents. They had smallpox naturally occurring in the ’70s in Iraq, and they may have taken that advantage to preserve this viral agent. I think by now everyone knows that as bad as anthrax is — and it can be very bad, indeed — with viral agents, by virtue of their capability to move from person to person, the casualties can be quite a bit larger. But we don’t know of their work in viral agents.
We can also worry about whether Iraq has done any of the type of research we believe has been done in the former Soviet Union: in engineering viruses to put together agents that spread very quickly, like smallpox, with agents that are more deadly, like viral hemorrhagic fevers. I’m talking about what we don’t know that we might worry about.
NJ: When you say “viral hemorrhagic fevers,” you’re talking about the Ebola virus?
Gallucci: Marburg and Ebola. Marburg is just about as deadly as Ebola, just about as ugly and disgusting. It is like Ebola. But instead of smallpox, which is about 30 percent deadly, hemorrhagic fevers are close to 90 percent deadly.
NJ: Do you think that Saddam had a hand in the anthrax that popped up in the United States?
Gallucci: I think Iraq would be very conservative in attacking the United States with a weapon of mass destruction, for fear of the consequences. I say that, but I worry that the risk propensity of Saddam is hard for us to fathom. As a colleague of mine once said, “He’s calculating, but he’s not very good at it.”
NJ: Could Saddam deliver a radiological “dirty bomb” in the United States?
Gallucci: It’s very important to draw a bright line between radiological weapons and nuclear weapons as we understand it, which is producing an explosive force by fission. A radiological weapon is a conventional bomb that is encased in or accompanied by radioactive material that is hazardous to our health.
But what you must please understand is that if a radiological weapon went off in downtown Washington on K Street, it is much more likely that any casualties would occur as a result of the blast from the conventional explosive, rather than from the radiation that would be spread about.
I don’t know any serious analyst who believes Iraq has a nuclear weapon right now. However, the bad part of this is, Iraq is known to have already done the development work for a nuclear explosive device, produced designs, and has put itself in the position of being able to produce a nuclear weapon relatively quickly — perhaps a month to a year — if it could get its hands on fissile material.
NJ: Britain issued a comprehensive, but not unexpected, document detailing Saddam’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Why is the drumbeat of war so loud right now? Is there a threat the public doesn’t know about?
Gallucci: If you can read the British white paper and not worry about the threat, there is nothing in the file cabinets at the CIA or anyplace else that would worry you. You are not a candidate for invasion advocacy.
It seems to me, you conclude the threat is serious now and growing. It comes principally from our concern over the transfer of this capability to an entity we cannot deter, such as al-Qaeda. I, for one, having lived through the 11th of September in Washington, don’t wish to rely on the lighting of candles as a method of dealing with that threat.
The United States and Lithuania signed an agreement last week to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Sept. 5). U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Ian Brzezinski and Lithuanian Defense Minister Linas Linkevicius signed the bilateral agreement, according to the Baltic news agency BNS.
Under the agreement, the United States will provide Lithuania with investigative and response equipment through the U.S. Defense Department’s international counterproliferation program (BNS, Oct. 10 in FBIS-SOV, Oct. 10). The United States has already signed a similar agreement with Latvia and expects to do so with Estonia, the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania said in a press release (see GSN, Dec. 14, 2001).
“Consumption of this agreement symbolizes Lithuania’s commitment to join into a new partnership with the United States directed at confronting the problem by working together as equal states,” Brzezinski said in a press statement.
The United States has already provided Lithuania with substantial assistance in strengthening border, transit and export controls, the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania said (U.S. Embassy in Lithuania release, Oct. 9).
Brzezinski was a member of a delegation of U.S. NATO officials, headed by U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns, that visited NATO candidate countries last week, RFE/RL NewsLine reported Friday (see GSN, Sept. 18; RFE/RL NewsLine, Oct. 11).
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