The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
•
develop a
plan for submission to the Council within 45 days “calling for
the
destruction,
removal or rendering harmless as appropriate” of all items
listed
in OP12;
•
carry out
that plan within 45 days of the Council’s approval;
and
•
develop a
plan for future monitoring and verification for the approval of
the
Security
Council “within one hundred and twenty days”.
120.
The Special
Commission provided for in OP9 subsequently became known
as
the United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), and was a subsidiary organ of
the
Security
Council, reporting to it through the UN Secretary-General. The
Council asked
the
Director General of UNSCOM to carry out inspections, and to develop
plans for the
future
monitoring and verification of both nuclear and other prohibited
weapons systems
and
programmes. Mr Rolf Ekéus, a Swedish diplomat who had been the
Ambassador to
the
Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from 1978 to 1983 and had been
involved
in
international negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention and
the Control and
Verification
of the Biological Weapons Convention, was appointed Executive
Chairman
of UNSCOM
on 15 April 1991 and began work on 24 April.
121.
Iraq’s initial
declarations in response to resolution 687 were incomplete and it
failed
to
co-operate with inspections and concealed activities.
122.
In resolution
687, the UN originally expected a three-step inspection
process:
•
full
disclosure by Iraq;
•
verification
of those disclosures by the Commission; and
•
destruction,
removal or rendering harmless under international
supervision,
of all
proscribed weapons, materials and facilities.46
123.
UNSCOM’s
approach was to establish a “material balance”, for each of
the
weapons
categories, between items acquired by Iraq through import or
production and
their
disposal by use or destruction.47
124.
Iraq provided
initial declarations of its holdings of prohibited weapons
on
125.
The Butler
Review was told that the JIC pre-conflict estimate that Iraq’s
stockpile
of chemical
agent was between 6,000 and10,000 tonnes was “derived from
past
46
UN Security
Council, ‘Letter dated 25 January 1999 from the Executive
Chairman of the Special
Commission
established by the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 9 (b)
(i) of Security Council
resolution
687 (1991) addressed to the President of the Security Council’
(S/1999/94), paragraph 3.
47
UN Security
Council, 11 April 1996, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on
the activities of the Special
Commission
established by the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 9 (b)
(i) of resolution 687 (1991)’
(S/1996/258).
48
UN Security
Council resolution 707 (1991).
46