UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19: An overwhelming majority of nations on Tuesday demanded that UN weapons inspectors be given a chance to disarm Iraq peacefully, opposing US and Britain which are seeking another resolution to use force on Baghdad.
At an open debate in the UN Security Council, called by South Africa, only Australia, Japan, Argentina and Peru, in varying degrees, supported the tough US-British position.
Ambassadors from some 27 countries spoke in the debate and envoys from another 29 states were expected to take the speakers seat on Wednesday.
Speaking at the outset of the meeting on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Ambassador of South Africa, Dumisani Kumalo, said the 114-member organisation and 15 NAM states with Observer status in the UN had requested the meeting because the council was engaged in a crucial debate that had important repercussions for the entire international community.
“To us, [Security Council] resolution 1441 was — and still is — about ensuring that Iraq is peacefully disarmed,” Kumalo said.
Recalling the update last Friday by the UN’s lead inspectors, Kumalo stressed that inspections were continuing apace and the inspectors themselves were receiving renewed cooperation from the Iraqi government. None of the information presented during last week’s or previous reports would justify the Council’s abandoning of the inspections process and resort to war, he added.
“Resorting to war without fully exhausting all other options represents an admission of failure by the Security Council in carrying out its mandate of maintaining international peace and security,” Kumalo said, urging the Security Council to redouble its efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution to the situation.
Iran’s ambassador, Javad Zarif, whose country was invaded by Iraq in 1980, said “the prospect of another destabilizing war in our immediate vicinity is a nightmare scenario of death and destruction.”
Zarif said that war would produce “the prospect of appointing a foreign military commander to run an Islamic and Arab country is all the more destabilizing and only indicative of prevailing delusions.”
The strongest support for the United States came from Australian Ambassador John Dauth, who said that given President Saddam Hussein’s “record” he was “not sure why we should be giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
“The council could give Iraq more time, yes. We could wait until March. We could wait another three months,” Dauth said. “But do we really think more time will make Iraq cooperate. Does Iraq really need more than three more months to make a decision that should take no more than three minutes?”
But New Zealand’s UN ambassador, Don MacKay said his government “has a very strong preference for a diplomatic solution to this crisis.”
Mohammed A. Aldouri of Iraq said his country’s record of compliance with Security Council resolutions is “unprecedented in this international organization or in the history of international relations.”
Iraq’s active cooperation since agreeing last October to the return of UN inspectors had resulted in the refutation of all allegations from the United States and Britain, he added.
“Reason and wisdom make it incumbent upon us to ask if there is any justification for the United States and Britain to launch war against Iraq under the pretext of their concern about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, even at a time when Iraq is under an ongoing monitoring and verification system,” Aldouri said.
