October 28, 2002
Disarming Iraq: The Lessons of UNSCOM

by James Phillips

"The Bush Administration is pressing the United Nations Security Council to get tough on Saddam Hussein's regime, which has violated 16 of its resolutions since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The United States presented a resolution to the U.N. Security Council on October 23 that would require Iraq to disclose and surrender its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and long-range missiles, or face "serious consequences," including possible military action by U.N. member states. In particular, Washington is pushing the Security Council to put teeth behind Resolution 687--long violated by Baghdad--which required Iraq to dismantle its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, and missiles with a range of more than 150 kilometers.

To deflate international pressure for a new and tougher U.N. Security Council resolution and to deflect the United States from war, Iraq recently agreed to permit the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, which it had blocked since 1998. But the crucial issue is to disarm Iraq, not merely to inspect it.

Inspections can work effectively only if Iraq is cooperative. As the timeline in the appendix shows, Baghdad has been far from cooperative in the past, and there is little reason to presume that it will be more accommodating in the future. Although Iraq disingenuously announced on September 16 that it was pleased "to allow the return of United Nations inspectors to Iraq without conditions,"2 it has already tried to impose conditions on what the inspectors can do after they return.

Indeed, the Iraqis already are backpedaling away from unconditional inspections. In the formal notification that Iraq sent to the United Nations later that week, it stipulated that inspectors must respect Iraq's dignity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and that the U.N. must apply the rules governing the elimination of Iraq's WMD programs to Israel as well.3 Iraq also proclaimed on September 21 that it would not abide by any new U.N. Security Council resolution that altered its prior agreements with the U.N.4 Acceding to this demand would result in a stillborn inspection system. It would allow Baghdad to retain the increasingly tight restrictions it had placed on U.N. inspectors through renegotiations, which watered down the effectiveness of the original inspection regime.

Washington cannot permit Saddam Hussein to make a charade of Iraq's disarmament obligations, as he did from 1991 to 1998..."