1.1 | UK
Iraq strategy 1990 to 2000
{{verification
by the Commission; and
{{destruction,
removal or rendering harmless under international
supervision.
•
Iraq’s
“consistent refusal” to provide “the information and materials
needed to
verify its
claim, clearly fails to satisfy the second step”; and that made the
third
step
“impossible”.
•
This
“difficult circumstance” had been made “even more complicated by
Iraq’s
claim that
it has unilaterally destroyed those prohibited weapons which were
not
destroyed
under international supervision”; and the Commission’s inability
to
verify
“all” those claims.
•
Mr Aziz’s
view was that UNSCOM’s “lack of technical competence and
bias
against
Iraq” was the “main reason” why Iraq’s claim was not
accepted.
•
The
Commission’s view was that Iraq’s “basic declarations of its
holdings
and
capabilities in prohibited weapons areas” had “never been ‘full,
final or
complete’”,
and that Iraq’s failure to “fill in the gaps” in its declarations
and “acts
of
unilateral destruction” had “significantly obfuscated the
situation”.
498.
Addressing the
standard of verification needed for credible reports to the
Council
under
paragraph 22 of resolution 687, Mr Butler stated
that:
•
where
prohibited weapons had existed, UNSCOM “must be able to
verify
positively
that they have been destroyed, removed or rendered harmless”;
and
•
where items
and facilities for the potential production of such weapons
existed,
UNSCOM
“must be able to verify negatively that prohibited weapons are
not
being
created”.
499.
The remainder
of the report set out UNSCOM’s concerns about lack of
substantive
progress on
the priority issues set out in its previous report, including
concerns about the
impact of
the technical evaluation meetings requested by Iraq, which were
attributed to
Iraq’s
failure to deliver the information and documents
requested.
500.
In three
areas, new concerns had arisen:
•
Following
Iraq’s insistence that it was not necessary to account for all
extant
munitions
on the grounds that any CW agent would have degraded to an
inert
state,
analysis of four 155mm artillery shells “filled with mustard of the
highest
quality”,
showed that they “could be stored for decades without any loss
of
quality”.
•
In March
1998, the Commission had discovered a document, dated 1994,
which
“indicated
the existence, at a site monitored by … [a] missile monitoring
team,
of a
programme for the manufacture of nozzles for spray dryers to be
delivered
to Al Hakam,
Iraq’s principal biological weapons production
facility”.
•
Also in
March 1998, the Commission discovered documents, dated
1993,
that
reflected a systematic attempt to deceive the Commission at that
time,
contrary to
Iraq’s claim that it had ended its concealment activities in 1991
and
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