PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQI DISARMAMENT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQI DISARMAMENT

Iraqi officials had again blocked the Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Centre's attempt to conduct inspections in the Baghdad area, the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission on the Disarmament of Iraq, Richard Butler, said this afternoon at a Headquarters press briefing.

A correspondent asked if the Special Commission would continue to send U2 flights and include Americans on the inspection teams. Mr. Butler said the U2 team had been notified and would fly on Monday. As to whether he would continue sending out inspection teams, the matter was under review. If they were going to keep hitting the same wall, he would have to think about that. However, he had signed instructions for them to go out tomorrow. In reply to another question, he said he would wait until next week before making a decision about removing all of the inspectors.

Mr. Butler drew attention to his most recent letter to the Security Council, in which he explained that Iraqi officials had blocked attempts to investigate the movement of equipment that was being monitored. The Commission's teams were prevented from carrying out their inspections on 6 November and again today, 7 November.

He went on to explain that chemical air samplers to detect prohibited chemical activities if they had occurred had been installed at certain sites. The samplers include cassettes which must be changed on a regular basis and analysed at the Commission's laboratory in Baghdad. The team was prevented from changing the cassette at the site in question.

He said some of the sites that were being monitored were capable of carrying out chemical warfare-related activities within a matter of days. They had dual purpose equipment which could be used for making aspirin or mustard gas -- equipment that could be converted quite quickly. If the samples were not "sniffing the air", there was no way to monitor that activity.

The Chairman went on to say that he had received another letter from the Chargé d'affaires of the Iraqi Mission, stating that the Commission's U2 planes had been spying on Iraq in order to execute America's hostile policy against Iraq. It further warned that if any of those aircraft was shot down, it would be Mr. Butler's personal responsibility. Iraqi officials said they had moved equipment because they feared an American attack. Nevertheless, they were now turning the lights back on at sites where the video screens had been darkened.

UNSCOM Briefing - 2 - 7 November 1997

Responding to another question, he characterized the latest violations as serious. The Commission had a relatively large monitoring system in Iraq, and the Council had provided for a long-term monitoring function in the future, when the disarmament was complete. While past and current activities concerned disarmament, future activities would concern monitoring. To that end, the monitoring system was designed to ensure that what had been created in the past -- weapons of mass destruction -- would not be recreated in the future.

With cameras and air samplers, it was possible to determine whether Iraq was making chemical weapons, he went on to say. The current impediments did not augur well for the future. He did not know the real meaning of Iraq's refusal to allow the team to change the cassette that collected the air. Was it because the person who might be changing the cassette was an American?

Any degradation of the monitoring system opened up the possibility that a chemical weapons agent would be made, he said. If the crisis continued, there would soon be little information on the baseline of chemical weapons agents held by Iraq; the Commission would have to start from the beginning. Not allowing the change of the cassette was quite serious.

Asked if the latest violations were the most serious challenge to the Commission's authority, he said they were not. The new violations were a serious part of a set of circumstances that was terribly wrong -- circumstances which had stemmed from Iraq's decisions of 29 October. Asked if there were Americans on the inspection teams that had been barred from changing the cassette, he said he instructed team members not to answer questions about their nationality. They were to identify themselves as members of the Commission's inspection team.

Another correspondent asked about Iraq's biological warfare capacity. "They can make the stuff and they can deliver it by rudimentary means", Mr. Butler said. Iraq had filled some warheads with biological weapons in the past. The inspection teams were now looking for warheads with biological warfare capability. Prior to recent events, it was hoped that the Iraqis would provide the Commission with information concerning the location of such weapons. Biological weapons did not need missiles for delivery -- they could be delivered by such rudimentary means as crop dusters and spray tanks.

Asked how many other sites were still being tampered with, Mr. Butler said he did not know, as video cameras were still being obstructed. Yesterday they showed pictures of relevant weapons; today they showed sandbags. The question was whether the equipment was now behind the sandbags or had been moved.

Charles Duelfer, Deputy Executive Chairman of the Special Commission, said the good news was that the lights were back on. The bad news was that "when they turned the lights back on, there was nothing there".

UNSCOM Briefing - 3 - 7 November 1997

A correspondent said that Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Tariq Aziz had asked that the Commission be "rebalanced", presumably to cut the number of Americans. Asked if he was prepared to do that, Mr. Butler said it was out of the question. "We hire the best people we can find"; the idea of rebalancing the teams made no sense.

Mr. Butler also drew attention to an article in today's Herald Tribune, in which his predecessor, Rolf Ekeus, had made clear that the leading experts in the Commission -- among the best in the world on chemical and biological weapons -- were Russian and French. Yet Iraq had been saying that the Commission would be much better off if it had more Russians and Frenchmen. They had specified "real Russians" -- that is, Russians who would carry out the instructions of the Russian Government, as opposed to the Russians on the team who were hired in terms of their competence.

Asked for comment on the Iraqi charge that Americans on the team were agents of the Central Intelligence Agency, he replied, "nonsense".

To another question, he said that the history of the relationship between Iraq and the Special Commission was of failure by Iraq to deliver what the Council had requested. He recalled that the original deadline for compliance had been 15 days following the adoption of resolution 687 (1991) of 3 April. The reason the monitoring and verification operation had taken too long was because of Iraq.

Asked for his personal opinion of Iraq's political stance, he said he did not know.

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