PRESS BRIEFING BY EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQ
Press Briefing
PRESS BRIEFING BY EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQ
19970916
The Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission set up under Security Council resolution 687 (1991), Richard Butler, this afternoon briefed correspondents on that body's recent activities with respect to the disposal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Since his appointment as Executive Chairman just over two months ago, he had just completed his second visit to Baghdad, Mr. Butler said. While there, he consulted with the Iraqi authorities and also made some changes at the United Nations monitoring and verification centre. During his first visit, at the end of July, the parties had agreed to additional work tasks aimed at accelerating the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Butler said the Security Council had imposed two requirements on the Commission: that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated, and that its future programmes must be monitored to ensure that such weapons systems were not re-created. It had been more than six years since the Council made those decisions. When he had last addressed correspondents, he expressed serious concern that it had taken so long to get through the disarmament phase. However, following agreement with his Iraqi colleagues to quicken the pace, progress was now "substantially good".
Regarding the excavation of purportedly destroyed scud missiles, Mr. Butler expressed satisfaction that "we are getting very close to be able to account for the scud missiles that were imported by Iraq in the past". Those missiles, which had numbered 819, were prohibited because their range exceeded 150 kilometres. Through the excavations, all of the launch vehicles and nearly all of the missiles had been accounted for, and only a very small gap remained -- "less than the fingers of one hand". Some additional laboratory work was required before he could say that a zero balance had been achieved, "but that picture is looking better than it has for quite a while".
There had also been some progress in the area of chemical weapons, Mr. Butler said. Major pieces of chemical weapons manufacturing equipment and precursors had been identified. Those precursors were now being destroyed, and the equipment would be crushed quite soon never again to be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. In addition, a procedure to identify the nature and scope of Iraq's chemical weapons production, and especially of a chemical agent called "VX", had been agreed upon and would soon be implemented.
With regard to biological weapons, Mr. Butler said the full, final and long-awaited declaration required by the Security Council had not been forthcoming by Iraq. However, in July, he stressed his concerns to Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and upon his visit to Iraq last week, a
700-page document describing Iraq's biological weapons programme -- the existence of which it had denied until 18 months ago -- was handed over.
Mr. Butler said that the release of that document represented a full, final and complete declaration from Iraq in the three main weapons fields: missile, chemical and biological. That meant that attention could now turn to the vital task of verifying, and ultimately destroying, those weapons.
The Executive Chairman said he would return to Iraq at the beginning of November, after presenting his report to the Security Council, which it was to consider around 14 October.
A correspondent sought clarification on what she understood to be a United Nations policy to disarm Iraq, rather than simply to limit such disarmament to weapons with a 150-kilometre range. Mr. Butler said the Council had decided that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction must be identified, located and "destroyed, removed or rendered harmless". The focus was solely on weapons of mass destruction, which included nuclear weapons, missiles, and chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear weapons were being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, while the Special Commission looked after missiles and chemical and biological weapons. A proscribed missile -- which must be destroyed, removed or rendered harmless -- was any missile that could fly further than 150 kilometres.
Asked about a document from last spring reporting, a previously unidentified biological weapons programme in Iraq, Mr. Butler said he had not yet read the entire document, which contained a lot of detail. His experts were hard at work on it now.
To another question, Mr. Butler said that discussions last week had focused on the accounting for special warheads filled with chemical and biological agents. There was an idea of how many such warheads had been made, but a slight discrepancy still remained with Iraq's figures, which should be closed. He also had a very good idea of what those warheads contained in terms of chemical and biological agents, but that, too, needed to be cross- checked against Iraq's records. The information Iraq had provided on that item was not accurate, and so further information was being sought.
A correspondent asked for additional information about two recent inspections with which Mr. Butler had not been satisfied. The Executive Director said there was an agreement with Iraq on modalities for the inspection of sensitive sites -- two of which had been visited over the weekend. The document on modalities provided for the possibility of Iraq delaying entry to such a site, pending arrangements, but those arrangements had clear conditions, including that the site should "freeze". Mr. Butler had reason to believe that, on two occasions over the weekend, the freezing process had not occurred, thereby violating the modalities. He was taking the matter up with Deputy Prime Minister Aziz.
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