4 February 2003

PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECURITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT

The Permanent Representative of Germany, Gunter Pleuger, whose delegation holds the presidency of the Security Council in February, briefed correspondents today on the work programme for the month, highlighting plans for tomorrow’s briefing by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell before the Security Council.

Drawing attention to the calendar of work, which was distributed to correspondents, he said there was “sufficient open space to be prepared for the unexpected”.  During the Council’s first meeting for the month, he had expressed his condolences to the United States Ambassador because of the terrible accident of the Columbia space shuttle.  On behalf of all Council members, he expressed his grief and heartfelt condolences to the American Government and to Americans on the loss of life.

He said that the first big event for the month was the public meeting tomorrow on the situation between Iraq and Kuwait, at which United States Secretary of State Powell would brief the Council, at the ministerial level.  He expected 12 Foreign Ministers; the delegations of Syria, Guinea and Angola would be represented at the ambassadorial level.  The meeting would start at

10:30 a.m. “sharp” with an extensive briefing by Mr. Powell, who was bringing technicians and experts.  He also planned an audio-visual presentation.  Council members were asked to limit their remarks to between six and eight minutes.

The usual procedure of drawing lots would determine the order of speakers, which would then be arranged according to protocol, with the Ministers speaking before the Permanent Representatives, he said.  The Council had received a request from the Permanent Representative of Iraq to participate in the meeting.  That request would be addressed by members, as usual, at the meeting.  Provided that the Council decided to grant that request, the Iraqi representative would be invited to sit at the Council table and to make a statement at the end of the meeting. 

After the meeting, which he expected to run straight through without suspension, the German delegation would host a luncheon for Council members, where they could continue to debate questions that might not have been exhausted in the open meeting.  He highlighted a few other scheduled meetings of the Council, including those on Kosovo, the Middle East, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  On 25 February, the Council would hold a public meeting on general issues relating to sanctions.  The Swedish State Secretary would present the results of the Stockholm process, which dealt with the question of smart sanctions, an important issue. 

Asked about future briefings by the heads of the weapons inspections regime for Iraq, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, he said the forthcoming trip to Baghdad by the two would be a very important one.  Mr. Blix had given a “very sceptical” report to the Council last Monday and he had asked for more proactive support and a change of attitude on the part of Iraq.  He would seek that on his next trip.  The report he would give on 14 February would be very important.  The Council, in the end, would decide whether the inspections were successful or whether there was a material breach. 

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To a question about when the issue of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea might come before the Council, he said that negotiations were ongoing to settle the problem diplomatically and he had not wished to disturb those.  The Council had not been seized of that matter so far.  When it came before the Council, it would come through the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had not yet made a report to the Council.  When that happened, the Council would take a decision about putting it on the agenda.

Would tomorrow’s meeting compare in any way to the meeting held in 1962, in which then United States Secretary of State Adlai Stevenson presented aerial photographs of Soviet missiles and missile sites in Cuba, and would it be possible to have that kind of direct dialogue in light of present Security Council rules? another correspondent asked.

Mr. Pleuger said he could not predict the kind of discussion that would evolve tomorrow.  He knew the formal framework, which was a briefing accompanied by an audio-visual presentation along with technicians who would present evidence.  Indeed, Mr. (Joschka) Fischer (Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany) saw Mr. Powell before the meeting, which was only natural between the Council presidency and the briefer, he replied to a further question.  He added later that if the presentation prompted a lot of questions from Council members, a kind of direct interaction could develop.  The presidency would not oppose that.

Asked whether his Government had been contacted about the possibility of a second Security Council resolution following on resolution 1441 (2002), he said no. 

Asked to describe the present state of German-US relations and the circumstances under which the United States might not introduce a further resolution until after the Germans handed over the Presidency to Guinea on

1 March, he said he did not comment on speculation.  While he was not responsible for German-American relations, he had “excellent, excellent” professional and personal relations with Ambassador Negroponte.  “We trust each other, we work together”.  Differing views happened; that always happened in the trans-Atlantic relationship.

To another question, he reiterated that any intelligence available to any Member State should be made available to the inspectors.  Mr. Blix, last Monday, singled out Germany as having been particularly good in providing all of the intelligence it had, as well as high-tech experience and experts to the team.  Everybody else should do the same, in order to sharpen the inspections tool as much as possible.  But, how helpful the information supplied tomorrow would help the inspectors depended on the information.

Was this the last chance for Iraqi authorities? another correspondent asked.  He said that resolution 1441 (2002) provided a last chance to solve that problem peaceably, which was what everyone wanted.  There was unanimity in the Council about the need to disarm Iraq and remove weapons of mass destruction and programmes to acquire or build such weapons.  The best way to do that was through inspections. 

He added that resolution 1441 (2002) made it quite clear that if the inspectors made a report to the Council that they had not gotten cooperation

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from Iraq, or if they found anything to indicate material breach with that resolution beyond that which had existed at the time the resolution was adopted, then there would be another meeting.  Following the briefings by the inspections chiefs -- Mr. Blix saying he was on the verge of being fully operational, and Mr. ElBaradei saying he needed only a few months to give a clear statement about any nuclear weapons programme in Iraq -- there were between 11 to 13 delegations that felt that the inspections tool had just been sharpened.  Most felt “let’s give the inspections another chance before we break it off”, he recalled.

Asked how much hope he had that some of the evidence would be concrete and “actionable”, he said he could only guess, adding that that was something he had been asking for all along.  Any intelligence on where Iraq might have hidden weapons of mass destruction or related programmes and documentation should be provided to the inspectors.  That was what he had wanted.

Responding to a comment by a correspondent that the German position was that military force should not be used to disarm Iraq under any circumstances, he said that the reporter had misrepresented the German position, which was that it would not participate in military action.  That was all the Chancellor had said.  He had never said that military action could be excluded in a political strategy.  Just a few years ago, in Kosovo, there was a strategy that contained an element of military threat.  There, Germany had participated with other Member States of the European Union and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, together.  This was a different case and was being presented here in a distorted way.

In Berlin, an assessment had been made of the risks and possible benefits of a military action in Iraq, he said.  That had concluded that there were many unanswered questions about military action right now and, thus, the risks “by far outweighed the possible benefits”.  Also, Germany, and not France or the United Kingdom, provided the second largest number of soldiers in internationally mandated peacekeeping operations, after the United States.  More than 11,000 soldiers were in the field right now, and that number would grow when Germany assumed the leading role in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.  Ten thousand people in the field required another

20,000 for rotation.  If a country was involved in peacekeeping operations very far from home, enormous logistics were required, for which Germany had committed another 30,000 people. 

In all, he continued, some 60,000 were involved in Germany’s peacekeeping operations –- in the Balkans, Afghanistan, in the Indian Ocean, and so on.  That meant that one-quarter of the German forces were involved in peacekeeping operations.  “We are at the limits of our capabilities”, he said, adding that those considerations had not been taken up in the press.  Germany was doing everything in its power to make the inspections sharp and effective, and that would continue to be its policy.

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