Documents, not weapons

By Salama Ahmed Salama

The inspection teams, under Butler's direction, are commissioned to search for weapons of mass destruction or for equipment and facilities used in the production of such weapons. Reports submitted by these committees, however, have confirmed that all ballistic missiles, launching facilities and equipment identified as "weapons of mass destruction" have already been destroyed.

When inspection teams stepped up their search for chemical and biological weapons, a technical dispute erupted between the French and Swiss experts, on one hand, and US experts, on the other, regarding a substance discovered on missile warheads and alleged to be traces of poison gas. While no conclusive decision was reached, the fact remains that, after eight years of strenuous investigations, the inspection teams have found little to report.

Upon his return to Iraq, however, still casting about for some pretext to justify the US's craving to annihilate Iraq, Butler, the executive chairman of UNSCOM and a US agent, brought up the question of documents which had not been surrendered by Iraq to UNSCOM. In other words, UNSCOM's mission seems to have shifted from the search for weapons and equipment to the search for data, an about-face prompted by the hope that some excuse to blast Iraq can be found.

Even if we assume that the Iraqis, who have surrendered over two million documents to UNSCOM, have in fact hidden or destroyed some data relating to their weapons programme, can this constitute a pretext for Britain and the US to attack Iraq, destroy Baghdad and kill hundreds or thousands of innocent Iraqis? If Baghdad has indeed surrendered all existing documents, will it also be required to deliver to UNSCOM scientists and experts who were involved in developing weapons? The documents required, furthermore, are not related to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait but to its war with Iran, which was fuelled by the US in 1980 to quell the Khomeini revolution, and in which the US, Britain, Germany and most Western European countries supplied Iraq with weapons. As suppliers of weapons to Iraq, therefore, such countries would certainly be in possession of the documents demanded by UNSCOM.

Changing UNSCOM's mission from a search for weapons to a search for documents proves it has failed in achieving the very goal for which it was created. After examining the presidential palaces and other sites with a fine-tooth comb, having been expelled from Iraq several times, UNSCOM is seeking new material evidence to justify its presence. Since the Arabs have not asked the US to oust the regime, why does the US have its missiles trained on Baghdad? Silence on the part of the Arabs will prompt the US to proceed, adding coal to the fire and pushing for a new military confrontation in the region. The price, in the end, will be paid by the Arabs.