09/24/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10149

IRAQ AND WEAPONS INSPECTORS

As President George W. Bush said in his speech to the United Nations, Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq continues to violate the conditions placed on it by the U-N Security Council since 1991. Those conditions were contained in the 1991 cease-fire resolution and the series of resolutions adopted in the decade after a U.S.-led international coalition forced Iraqi troops to withdraw from Kuwait. Baghdad is required to forswear weapons of mass destruction, end support for terrorism, cease persecuting its civilian population, release or account for all missing Gulf War personnel, and end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program.

Following President Bush’s speech, Iraq’s foreign minister sent a letter stating that U-N weapons inspectors would be unconditionally allowed back into Iraq. But the Iraqi letter seems to be little more than a ploy or a stalling tactic. Indeed, it is hard to view the Iraqi offer any other way, given the record of the last eleven years. In June 1991, just a month after agreeing to give U-N weapons inspectors unrestricted freedom of entry and exit, Iraqis fired warning shots at the inspectors to keep them away from suspicious vehicles. Such incidents continued throughout the inspectors’ years in Iraq.

In June 1997, Iraqi escorts on board a U-N helicopter attempted physically to prevent the pilot from flying to the intended destination. In September 1997, an Iraqi officer attacked a U-N inspector on board a U-N helicopter while he was attempting to photograph unauthorized movement of Iraqi vehicles inside a site designated for inspection. That same month, U-N inspectors seeking access to a suspect site videotaped Iraqi guards moving files, burning documents, and dumping ash-filled waste cans into a nearby river. The U-N inspection teams left Iraq in December 1998 because they could no longer do their job.

A new inspection regime must be immediate, unrestricted, and unconditional: "go anywhere, at any time, see anyone." That’s why U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that any U-N resolution "must be strong enough and comprehensive enough that it produces disarmament, not just inspections."

The United Nations Security Council must ensure Iraq’s disarmament. If it cannot or will not do so, President Bush said, "the United States and some of our friends will."