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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 April 1999 Issue No. 424 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 April 1999 Issue No. 424
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Bad news for Baghdad
When US and British forces bombed Iraq last December, after Saddam Hussein's government expelled the UN weapons inspectors, Baghdad claimed that the attacks had put an end to the work of UNSCOM, the UN commission entrusted with the task of eliminating its arms of mass destruction.Baghdad's calculations, or at least most of them, now seem to be wrong after a panel of international experts, set up by the Security Council, concluded that all the remaining disarmament issues related to Iraq's weapons programmes can be checked by a new system of monitoring.
The council established the panel in February -- along with two others which were asked to assess the humanitarian situation in Iraq and reparations to Kuwait -- after coming under pressure from member states sympathetic towards Iraq's demands that a comprehensive review be conducted of its cooperation with UNSCOM.
While Baghdad expected that such an assessment would relieve Iraqi suffering under the harsh nine-year sanctions, the United States and Britain hoped that it would clear the way to restarting arms inspections that were halted by December's airstrikes.
But, after more than a month of deliberations behind closed doors, the panel on Iraq's disarmament came up with recommendations that failed to give Iraq a clean bill of health and suggested a new relationship with Baghdad on its secret arms programmes.
Two Iraqi soldiers sift through the debris of an oil pumping facility in Abul-Kaseeb 14 kilometres south of Basra. The facility was hit during an airstrike by allied aircraft. The pumping station was one of the three that controls the flow of crude oil from Iraq's southern oil fields (photo:AP)
As the head of the panels, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Nations, Celso Amorim, announced the recommendations on 29 March, but it again became clear that Iraq's hope for a reprieve still looks as far away as ever.
Celso said there were still disarmament-related questions which needed to be addressed and, therefore, he suggested a new system to investigate Iraq's past activities in the field of weapon production.
However, what is most worrying to Iraq is the panel's assertion that the monitors must maintain the right to perform intrusive inspections of its weapons-related sites like the ones UN inspectors carried out for the last nine years.
Two days later, the humanitarian panel made its conclusions, significantly omitting a recommendation to lift the sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Some of the Security Council's members, like China, France and Russia, had suggested lifting sanctions as a way to persuade Baghdad to let UN inspection of its weapons programme resume.
Instead, the panel proposed a series of improvements to the UN oil-for-food programme, which allows Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to buy food and medicine for its people every six months. One key amendment the panel suggested was that Iraq be allowed to buy humanitarian goods without consulting the UN sanctions committee.
Because Iraq currently cannot meet the $5.2 billion ceiling due to low oil prices and production limits, the panel suggests that the council consider authorising foreign investment to improve Iraq's oil infrastructure and export abilities.
As for the Kuwaiti report, the panelists concluded that Iraq had not provided sufficient explanations about some 600 missing Kuwaitis or cooperated enough in returning looted property.
The United States, which along with Britain has maintained the toughest line on Iraq among the Security Council members, has indicated it was satisfied with the panel's conclusions, and it showed no sign of relinquishing its demand to fully disarm Iraq of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as its long-range missiles.
State Department Spokesman James Rubin said, "The report recognises that there are outstanding disarmament issues in Iraq, and that an intrusive monitoring regime is required to prevent re-armament."
"In fact, the report states that the monitoring system already approved by the Council gives the inspectors the rights, privileges and immunities necessary to do the job," Rubin said.
However, the ultimate decision on how to proceed with Iraq was still up to the highly-politicised Security Council where sharp divisions between Russia, the United States and Britain have further deepened with the new crisis over Kosovo.
In the meantime, Iraq has kept a tight lip on the panels' recommendations, probably waiting until they are officially delivered to the Council on 15 April. Iraq has made it clear that it would reject any new UN relationship that does not call for the lifting of the economic embargo.
However, Said Hassan, Iraq's UN ambassador, made a preliminary response to the recommendations last week indicating that they offered "no real solution" to the problems that Iraqis face, after more than nine years of all-encompassing sanctions which have crippled Iraq's economy.
"Our position is clear," Hassan told reporters on 30 March. "I do not think there is a way out short of lifting sanctions," he said.
Iraq is certainly not pleased with at least one conclusion of the disarmament panel, namely the recommendation to continue the intrusive inspections.
Thus, Iraq will be faced with a difficult choice again; either acquiescing to the new system of monitoring its weapons programmes, which means the continuation of sanctions, or continuing its strategy of defiance and confrontation. So, the world may be in for another political showdown in the Gulf sometime soon.
