On January 27, 2003, head U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, stated the following to the UN Security Council:
Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I
shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was
often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa,
which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons
and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence
in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a
genuine acceptance--not even today--of the disarmament,
which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out
to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.
As we know, the twin operation "declare and verify,"
which was prescribed in resolution 687 (1991), too often
turned into a game of 'hide and seek'. Rather than just
verifying declarations and supporting evidence, the two
inspecting organizations found themselves engaged in
efforts to map the weapons programmes and to search for
evidence through inspections, interviews, seminars,
inquiries with suppliers and intelligence organizations.
On February 14, 2003, Blix told the Security Council that:
If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991,
the phase of disarmament--under resolution 687 (1991)--
could have been short and a decade of sanctions could
have been avoided. Today, three months after the adoption
of resolution 1441 (2002), the period of disarmament
through inspection could still be short, if "immediate,
active and unconditional cooperation" with UNMOVIC and
the IAEA were to be forthcoming.
And again, in its February 28, 2003 report, UNMOVIC informed the Security Council that:
"During the period of time covered by the present report,
Iraq could have made greater efforts to find any
remaining proscribed items or provide credible evidence
showing the absence of such items."
On March 6, 2003, UNMOVIC--confronted with the same list of unaccounted for weapons and weapons-related material that President Clinton had cited in explaining the reason behind his 1998 bombing of Iraq--reported to the Security Council that:
"The onus is clearly on Iraq to provide the requisite
information or devise other ways in which UNMOVIC can
gain confidence that Iraq's declarations are correct and
comprehensive. . . ."
In April, 2003, Secretary Cohen flatly stated that he believed that Saddam had weapons:
"I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in
1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from
gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with
trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am
absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find
them."
And in its first post-war (May 30, 2003) report to the Security Council, UNMOVIC acknowledged:
"The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as
such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was not
shortened either by the inspections or by Iraqi
declarations and documentation."
To the contrary, as UNMOVIC also reported in its May 30 report:
Iraq was required to declare the import of dual-use items
and supply UNMOVIC with details as to their origin.
However, Iraq's recent semi-annual monitoring declarations,
starting with the "backlog" of declarations since 1998
supplied to UNMOVIC in October 2002, showed a trend of
withholding pertinent information. . . . The biological
imports were of a slightly more significant kind, and
included the import of a dozen autoclaves, half a dozen
centrifuges and a number of laminar flow cabinets.
Missile imports, however, were more substantial and could
have contributed significantly to any missile development
programme. One example was the importation of 380 Volga
engines that Iraq planned to use in the production of the
Al Samoud 2 missile, a missile system UNMOVIC later
determined to be prohibited since its range exceeded 150
km. In its declaration of 7 December 2002, Iraq declared
that it had imported 131 such engines but failed to
supply any information about their origin (suppliers,
exporting countries) until inspectors observed 231 such
engines at an Al Samoud production facility.
A trend that was especially pronounced in the missile
area (but to a lesser extent also present in the
biological and chemical fields) was the use of the
term "local market" to classify the import of some very
sophisticated pieces of equipment. . . .
UNMOVIC came to understand that Iraq used the term "local
market" when an Iraqi import company imported a commodity
and then sold or transferred it to a government facility,
which suggested that Iraq was trying to conceal the
extent of its import activities and to preserve its
importing networks."
