Iraqi declaration arrives at UN Headquater
( 2002-12-09 10:34 ) (7 )

A UN inspections team conducts a search for weapons of mass destruction at an agricultural facility near Baghdad December 1 ,2002. UN weapons inspectors visited an agricultural facility near Baghdad, the fourth day of inspections in a hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. [Reuters] Anti-war protestors lie in Whitehall in London, December 2, 2002. Britain accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on December 2 of gross human rights violations as it sought to harden public opinion ahead of a possible war with Iraq. [Reuters] Former atomic scientist Dr Hussain Al-Sharistani from Iraq, stands outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, December 2, 2002. Sharistani said he was imprisoned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein between 1979 and 1991, during which time he was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for refusing to work on Iraq's military nuclear programme.[Reuters] The interior of al-Sojoud Presidential palace is shown after UN inspectors finished their search in Baghdad December 3, 2002. UN arms inspectors searched the compound in the biggest test of Iraqi cooperation, with the inspectors saying they checked "every corner of the presidential palace." [Reuters] US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte (R) and British Deputy Ambassador to the U. N. Adam Thompson cast their votes during a U.N. Security Council meeting, December 4, 2002. The Security Council extended the oil-for-food humanitarian program in Iraq for six months.[Reuters] Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan attends a ceremony by a group of Egyptian Moslem clerics in Baghdad December 4,2002. Ramadan, in a blistering attack on Wednesday, accused UN inspectors hunting for banned weapons in Iraq of being US and Israeli spies.[Reuters] UN arms inspectors arrive to search for weapons of mass destruction at an Iraqi Presidential palace in Baghdad, December 3, 2002. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said on Dec. 5 that he would give the UN inspectors a chance to disprove U.S. accusations that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. [Reuters]

Weapons inspectors in New York and Vienna began combing through Iraq's massive dossier detailing its chemical, biological and nuclear programs Sunday to determine whether Baghdad is complying with Security Council resolutions.

In a surprise decision, the Security Council later agreed to give the United States, Russia, France, China and Britain full access the Iraqi declaration, U.N. officials and diplomats said.

The other 10 council members, including Syria, will only see the declaration once it is translated, analyzed and gleaned of sensitive material — including possible instructions on bomb-making.

Copies of the 12,000-page declaration, which left Baghdad on Saturday, arrived in two small suitcases and were met at U.N. headquarters in New York at 8:40 p.m. EST by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said his staff "will immediately take a look," at the material and get "an overview of how many pages are printed, how much did we get in CD-ROMs." Blix said his staff would be making copies of the document on Monday.

In a meeting afterward with Colombian Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso, current president of the Security Council, Blix was told that the five permanent council members would get their own copies of the declaration for immediate review.

"After consultation with the members of the Security Council, the presidency decided to allow access to the Iraqi declaration to those members with the expertise to assess the risk of proliferation and other sensitive information to begin its immediate review," he said.

U.N. officials said the only countries with that level of expertise are the five permanent members.

Valdivieso said the experts would work "in close coordination and consultation," with weapons inspectors and "will assist them in producing a working version of the declaration as soon as possible."

The decision overrides one made Friday to distribute censored copies to the council and means that Washington won't have to wait to begin its own analysis and translation of the 12,000 pages Iraq turned over to weapons inspectors on Saturday in Baghdad.

Under Security Council Resolution 1441 passed Nov. 8, Iraq had until Sunday to provide a full and complete accounting of its weapons programs. The council has insisted on such an accounting for years, and in the past Iraq provided partial reports which were updated only after inspectors discovered programs which were not included.

Under successive resolutions, passed since the Persian Gulf War was launched in 1991 to oust Saddam Hussein's troops from neighboring Kuwait, the Security Council has demanded that Iraq disarm and comply with a weapons inspections regime. Only after inspectors declare Iraq in compliance can 12 years of crippling sanctions, imposed after the Iraqi invasion, be suspended.

In its latest declaration, Iraq maintains it is free of weapons of mass destruction, a claim dismissed by the White House, which has warned that continued Iraqi attempts to hide such arms could lead to military retaliation.

Last week, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said there was a "solid basis" for assertions that Saddam possessed banned weapons and that the United States would provide that intelligence to U.N. inspectors. However, that evidence has not been forthcoming and Blix has continued to ask Washington to share its data.

Asked whether he was concerned about criticism from Washington about Iraq's compliance, Blix said, "I'm not concerned about that. They will have their reaction, and we will have our study."

The nuclear component of the new declaration arrived earlier Sunday in Vienna, Austria, where the International Atomic Energy Agency is based. The chemical, biological and missile components of the dossier will be analyzed and translated by Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's director-general, said analysts in Vienna began work immediately on the declaration, "including the painstaking and systematic cross-checking" of the information it contains. Iraq's account will be compared with intelligence provided by other nations and with data from past and present inspections, he said.

The IAEA hopes to provide the Security Council with a preliminary analysis within 10 days and a more detailed analysis when it reports back to the council at the end of January, ElBaradei said.

Blix said it would take some time for his team to sift through its sections of the documents, translate the Arabic portions and remove the so-called sensitive material. He said he was not certain whether his teams would also remove the names of companies which provided Iraq with weapons assistance more than a decade ago.

Iraq insists it has no programs for developing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. It turned over the declaration to U.N. officials in Baghdad on Saturday — a day before the deadline set out in Resolution 1441. Iraq also met the resolution's first deadline when it accepted its terms Nov. 14.

But Iraq's compliance with the declaration could determine whether it faces war with the United States and its allies. According to the resolution, any "omissions or false statements" in the declaration could be tantamount to "material breach," which Washington could use to argue the need for military action to enforce the resolution.

The complete declaration, in Arabic and English with an 80-page summary, was contained in at least a dozen bound volumes accompanied by computer disks. It covers such subjects as the 1990s U.N. weapons inspection regime in Iraq, when many arms and much production equipment were destroyed. It also details "dual-use" industries that can serve both civilian and military purposes.

Inspectors said they expect much of the declaration to include repetitious material that was submitted years ago.

The previous U.N. weapons inspection regime collapsed in December 1998 amid U.N.-Iraqi disputes over access to sites and Iraqi allegations that some inspectors were spies.

By the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which already was refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.

Inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.