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Annan criticized U.S. seizure of Iraq arms declaration, saying “the approach and the style and the form was wrong
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UNITED
NATIONS, December 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday, December 10, the decision
allowing the U.S. to take Iraq’s arms declaration from U.N.
headquarters was unfortunate, with Syria and Norway, both
non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, angered by the
move.
“It
was unfortunate and I hope it is not going to be repeated,” Agence
France-Presse (AFP) quoted Annan as saying.
U.S.
diplomats removed the declaration soon after it arrived in New York
late Sunday, December 8, and made copies for the four other permanent
members of the Security Council.
The
10 non-permanent members will get what Annan’s spokesman called “a
sanitized version” next week.
Annan
said the incident was discussed during the council’s monthly
luncheon with him on Tuesday.
“I
think the consensus of the group was that, in substance perhaps the
decision was fine but the approach and the style and the form was
wrong,” he said.
But
Annan dismissed the notion that “the U.N. is being pushed around by
the United States.”
“I
will remind people to look back to the eight-week period when we were
discussing this issue, when Washington was quite frustrated that
things were not moving fast enough.”
The
Security Council was “an exercise in democracy,” he added.
Norwegian
Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, whose country holds one of the 10
non-permanent seats, said he objected to being treated as “a
second-class country”.
The
chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said an edited version of
the 12,000-page dossier could be ready by Monday, and a preliminary
assessment available by Thursday, BBC’s online news service reported
Wednesday, December 11.
But
Blix stressed that what was being taken out of the lengthy document
was material that could be “risky” from the point of view of
weapons proliferation.
Syria’s
ambassador to the U.N., Mikhail Wehbe, said the decision to allow the
U.S. principal access was “in contradiction to... every kind of
logic in the Security Council.”
In
a BBC interview, Wehbe expressed fears that the five big powers might
claim Iraq was in material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441 - triggering
“serious consequences” - before non-permanent members of the
Security Council had even seen the dossier.
Iraq’s
ruling Baath party newspaper accused the United States Wednesday of
resorting to “mafia methods” by grabbing the only complete copy of
Iraq’s weapons declaration.
“It
seems that the U.S. government cannot but follow mafia methods,”
wrote Ath-Thawra daily, branding the U.S. move as “unethical
and insolent.”
Iraqi
Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the United States move to take the only
full copy of its 12,000-page inventory was “banditry unparalleled”
and that Washington intended to manipulate the document “to find a
pretext for aggression on Iraq.”
Also,
Jordanian newspapers slammed the U.S. Wednesday for taking the Iraqi
arms declaration, seeing in it a new sign of impending war on Baghdad.
“In
the midst of its hurry to deal a destructive military strike against
Iraq ... the United States rushed to obtain the original copy of the
Iraqi dossier,” ahead of the United Nations, Al-Dustour said
in an editorial.
This
was part and parcel of U.S. plans to “fabricate accusations, forge
the truth and turn upside down all the information” against Iraq, in
addition to dealing a “direct blow” to the United Nations, the
editorial said.
“We
realize that in this climate of American arrogance there is no room
for the objectiveness, truth, justice and values that characterized
international relations in the past.
“Today
Washington imposes American hegemony and decides by itself what is
right and just ... (and) as a result we are very pessimistic as to the
final outcome of the weapons inspections in Iraq.
“The
administration of President (George W.) Bush has already taken the
fatal decision to strike Iraq and is only looking forward now to
mobilize its troops,” the daily said.
An
editorial in the pro-government Al Rai daily saw
“discouraging signs” in the U.S. action because it “showed a
lack of respect for the international community and its desire to
impose its hegemony” on the world.
“Washington
and London must now reveal what they know about Iraq’s program of
weapons of mass destruction,” the editorial said.
The
English-language Jordan Times agreed that Washington must now
come up with convincing evidence to incriminate Iraq, chiding U.S.
criticism on the length of the 12,000-page Iraqi declaration.
“Iraq’s
12,000-page weapons declaration has already been criticized by some
U.S. circles as a simulated confession aimed at confusing the accusers
and getting them locked in the quagmire of a guessing game,” the
paper said.
“Someone
is trying to use even the length of Iraq’s weapons declaration as a
pretext for a military campaign,” it added.
“Should
the U.S. have incriminating evidence against Baghdad, it should hand
it in to the U.N. weapons inspectors to verify them. Short of this,
there is really no case against Iraq,” it said.
Meanwhile,
U.N. experts stepped up their inspections for suspected weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq after the arrival of more inspectors.
The
U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have beefed up their
presence to 70 inspectors after 28 experts flew in Tuesday.
A
first team of inspectors arrived Wednesday morning in the Al-Karama
complex, in Baghdad’s northern suburb of Al-Taji, which specialized
before the 1991 Gulf War in producing guidance and control systems,
including gyroscopes, for Al-Hussein missiles.
It
was the second inspection of this vast complex since November 25 when
the new disarmament work began after a four-year break.
On
Tuesday, an IAEA team spent several hours searching another unit at
the Al-Karama complex, while other weapons inspections teams visited
nine other sites in the Baghdad area and the western region of Iraq.
