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“The Council is master of its own deliberations,” Annan
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UNITED
NATIONS, December 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The United
States upset other Security Council members by removing the only
complete copy of Iraq’s declaration of its weapons of mass
destruction from U.N. headquarters soon after it arrived, diplomats
said Tuesday, December 10.
In
a move which diplomats said upset many in the Security Council, the
United States made copies of Iraq’s arms declaration for other key
council members Monday, after removing it from U.N. headquarters,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Diplomats
said not all 15 Council members were consulted before a U.S. official
took the declaration - containing almost 12,000 printed pages and
several computer disks - from the office of chief U.N. arms inspector
Hans Blix shortly after it arrived late Sunday, December 8.
“There
were no face-to-face consultations, and many members are upset,” one
diplomat said. The only one prepared to say so publicly, Syrian
Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe, said the act was “in contradiction with
every kind of logic in the Security Council and against the unity of
the Council.”
U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, who only earlier learned of the
incident, said: “The Council is master of its own deliberations. If
the council decided to do that, it is their right and I will not
quibble with that.”
British
and French diplomats said they got copies in Washington at 6.30 pm
(2330 GMT), about 18 hours after a U.S. official took the document -
containing almost 12,000 printed pages and several computer disks -
from the office of chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix, according to
AFP.
In
Washington, however, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
defended the U.S. action, saying the documents contained sensitive
data.
“We
have been asked to ensure that the document is copied in a controlled
environment in order to guard against the inadvertent release of
information,” he said.
A
French diplomat backed the U.S. stance saying, “They were done as
quickly as possible and in the requisite conditions of security.”
It
was not immediately possible to confirm that the two other
nuclear-armed permanent members - China and Russia - had also received
copies, although Council president Alfonso Valdivieso of Colombia said
those with special expertise in weapons proliferation would get the
declaration first.
Ironically,
the Iraqi government itself provided some support for Boucher’s
remarks, in a note to Valdivieso from Foreign Minister Naji Sabri
which accompanied the declaration to New York.
“Publication
of this detailed information, in particular the parts relating to
research and development and techniques for the production of agents
and weapons, entails risk and is inconsistent with the norms of the
non-proliferation regime,” Sabri wrote.
In
a statement, Valdivieso said he made his decision after consulting
other Council members, but it is not clear whether they also agreed to
the United States removing what was in effect the only complete copy
of Iraq’s statement.
Two
copies of the declaration were given Saturday to U.N. inspectors in
Baghdad, one day before the deadline set by council Resolution 1441,
which warned Iraq of “serious consequences” if it gave a partial
or inaccurate account of its alleged weapons programs.
One
copy was broken up, and an official of the International Atomic Energy
Agency took 2,100 pages dealing with Iraq’s nuclear weapons program
to the agency’s headquarters in Vienna.
The
U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission took the parts
detailing Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons and long-range
missiles, which were brought to Blix’s office, together with the
remaining complete copy, under seal for the Security Council.
Several
sources who asked not to be identified said three hours later, a U.S.
official, accompanied by Valdivieso, took the documents away.
The
documents were not signed for and Valdivieso did not even lay a hand
on them, the sources said.
A
U.S. official said the decision to restrict distribution of the
unedited declaration to five Council members was justified by the fact
that it might contain information enabling a country to produce
nuclear weapons.
However,
a representative of one of the 10 non-permanent council members
responded: “If there is any sensitive material it is probably that
which will determine whether Iraq is in material breach of council
resolutions.”
Such
material would have to be shared with other council members before a
decision was taken on the “serious consequences” threatened by
Resolution 1441, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
In
Tokyo, IAEA Director Mohamed El-Baradei said he expected to make a
preliminary assessment of the chapters on Iraq’s nuclear program
within 10 days and that he would report to the council by January 27.
And
in a separate related development, a British daily reported Tuesday
that the U.S. and Britain lack “killer” intelligence that will
prove conclusively that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,
according to sources in London and New York.
“If
we had intelligence that there is a piece of weaponry at this map
reference, we would tell the inspectors and they would be there like a
shot,” a source was quoted by The Guardian as saying.
After
handing its weapons declaration to the U.N., Iraq challenged the U.S.
and Britain to produce evidence that it still has weapons of mass
destruction.
However,
the U.S. and Britain insist the onus is on Iraq to prove that it has
no weapons of mass destruction, as it claims, rather than for them to
prove that it does. Whitehall sources Monday stood by their claims
that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that this was “based
not on what we say but on what we know”, the paper said.
However,
they said that passing the intelligence to the UN chief weapons
inspector, Hans Blix, would alert the Iraqis to the activities of U.S.
intelligence and might jeopardize its secret sources.
U.S.
officials said that the CIA and national laboratories specializing in
chemical, biological and nuclear warfare had begun an analysis of the
entire Iraqi declaration, and had been told to focus on a handful of
Iraqi claims that could be proved false with available intelligence, The
Guardian reported.
They
also said that American analysts would look for Iraqi explanations of
what had happened to thousands of tons of chemical and biological
agents, and equipment used in the construction of nuclear weapons that
were not accounted for in Iraq’s 1998 declaration.
