• by IPS Correspondents (united nations)
• Tuesday, December 20, 1994
• Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 20 (IPS) - The head of a U.N. commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi weaponry Tuesday warned that Baghdad's sluggish cooperation has slowed the monitors' pace.

But Rolf Ekeus, the chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), added that the weapons monitoring programme is "provisionally operational" and may finally make progress toward eliminating Iraq's weapons threat.

"Things are going in a satisfactory manner," Ekeus said after he reported to the U.N. Security Council on the progress of UNSCOM's monitoring regime, begun in October.

But the UNSCOM head complained that Iraq, which has boosted its cooperation with the United Nations so that it may earn the lifting of a near-total four-year embargo on the nation, still withholds data on past weapons programmes.

"We still expect and need from Iraq a more open attitude," Ekeus said. He added that the Iraqis working with the nation's secretive weapons programmes still share a "culture where they try to protect as much as they can."

"We have on a high political level clear statements from Iraq on their intent to cooperate" with UNSCOM, Ekeus said. "We hope those instructions will filter down to site managers" and other low-level officials who remain wary of the U.N. inspectors.

As a result of the Iraqis' caution, UNSCOM has been unable to glean material that would allow the monitors to understand how Baghdad previously built up its capabilities in biological, chemical, nuclear and long-range warfare.

Following Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and defeat in the U.S.- led 1991 Gulf War, the Security Council has made the lifting of sanctions contingent primarily on the scrapping of such weapons of mass destruction.

Baghdad has argued that, with its recent cooperation with UNSCOM and its recognition of Kuwait last month, it has fulfilled its U.N. obligations and should at least be allowed to sell its oil anew.

But UNSCOM has yet to certify that Iraq is in compliance with weapons demands, the requirement for lifting the oil embargo. And Ekeus noted that if the monitoring system continues to lack vital information on how Iraq's programmes were built in the first place, the process for lifting sanctions will lag.

UNSCOM's chief concern is to obtain a reliable list of foreign suppliers for all the components of Baghdad's nuclear, chemical and biological programmes.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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