-Caveat Lector-
Weapons chief censors Baghdad arms declaration
By Julian Coman in Washington and David Wastell, Diplomatic
Correspondent
(Filed: 08/12/2002)
A furious row has broken out within the United Nations Security
Council over a ruling by Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector,
denying America and Britain full access to Iraq's 11,807-page
weapons declaration, handed over in Baghdad yesterday.
White House officials complained that they had been "blind-sided"
by Mr Blix's decision, which he revealed behind closed doors late on
Friday, to provide only what one UN official called a "sanitised
version" of the declaration to the 15 members of the Security
Council.
Mr Blix, the head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (Unmovic), said inspectors would vet the declaration
before it is passed on, because of the risk that details of Iraq's
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes could be
used as a "cookbook" by other states or terrorists trying to build their
own weapons.
He proposed that the most sensitive information should be purged
from the text by inspectors, to ensure that it did not leak. To do
otherwise would breach international treaties on weapons
proliferation, he said.
Although Britain and America supported the plan to hold back
sensitive information from the 10 rotating members of the council -
notably Syria, which Washington has accused of supporting
terrorism - they are determined that they, France, Russia and China,
as the five permanent members, should see the whole text. Their
assessment of the Iraqi declaration will be crucial to the fate of
Saddam Hussein's regime.
"There was no agreement about who should see what," said a
western UN diplomat. "The Americans simply expect to get the
whole report. Other countries are determined to see anything that
America sees. They'll be arguing about it well into next week. It
wasn't just Syria. Mexico and several other countries were adamant
as well."
UN officials said that in the interests of "equity" all 15 Security
Council members should receive the same information. Mr Blix said:
"All the governments are aware that they should not have access to
anything that everyone else does not have access to."
Another UN official said: "It would be quite wrong for some
members to get a sanitised version but not others. That is not what
was agreed on Friday." American officials were furious at the
decision, having been led to believe on Thursday that they would
receive the declaration at around 10pm tonight.
American intelligence officials are waiting to compare the document
with their own information on Iraq's weapons programmes. A White
House official privately accused Mr Blix of throwing a last-minute
"curveball".
The Bush administration said it would wait until Mr Blix reports to
America and other Security Council members early this week before
making its feelings known. American officials said privately that Mr
Blix could not be allowed to have sole control of the Iraqi document.
The UN resolution ordering the declaration states that Iraq must
provide its weapons declaration to the UN weapons inspectors "and
the Security Council".
Britain, like the US, wants to see the document in its entirety, and
"went along with the agreement" in the belief that it would eventually
see the full text, officials close to the Security Council said. The
Foreign Office refused to comment last night.
The delay means that although the Iraqi declaration will be delivered
tonight to UN headquarters in New York and the International
Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Security Council members will not
see it until the end of the week at the earliest.
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The UN provides cover [for terrorism] almost the same
way the Taliban does.... It serves as the laboratory,
the linchpin for legitimizing incendiary rhetoric"
against the United States.
~~Criminologist Harvey Kushner, a professor at Long
Island State University and a widely respected analyst
of terrorism
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