UNITED NATIONS: The United States is undermining the international disarmament regime by abandoning multilateralism in favour of unilateralism, according to senior UN officials and US arms control experts.
After its runaway military victory over Iraq, Washington has publicly rebuffed both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) — the only UN bodies legally mandated to declare whether or not Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The White House has declared it is “adamantly opposed” to the return of UN arms inspectors to Baghdad.
“The (US-led) coalition has assumed responsibility for the disarming of Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction,” US ambassador John Negroponte told reporters early this week.
But IAEA Executive Director Mohammed El-Baredei and UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix have expressed disappointment over the US stand on arms inspections.
El-Baredei says his agency continues to be the “sole organization with legal powers derived both from the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and successive UN Security Council resolutions to verify Iraq’s nuclear disarmament.”
“The IAEA should resume its work in Iraq as soon as possible,” he added.
Blix says it would be advisable for US military forces to forego their current search and permit an international team of arms inspectors to verify Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Such an international verification process would also have more credibility — particularly at a time when there is widespread speculation that Washington may “plant” its own weapons and then blame the Iraqis, says one senior UN official.
Ron Daniels, executive director of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, said the United States must invite other nations to cooperate in the inspection process because of those concerns, “amplified by recent reports that an American military team has located a scientist who they claim has led them to materials that can be used as the building blocks for illegal weapons”.
“The search for and verification of WMD must be independently verified by UN weapons inspectors and their destruction carried out in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993,” Daniels asserted.
Despite these warnings, the US has already picked two US military contractors — Raytheon Corporation and Kellogg, Brown and Root — who will shortly dispatch about 200 to 250 inspectors to search for WMD in Iraq.
The US decision to continue its a unilateral search for weapons in Iraq is also expected to be a stumbling block to Washington’s efforts to lift the 12-year-old UN sanctions imposed on Iraq.
The Security Council resolution imposing sanctions specifically says the embargo will be lifted only after UN arms inspectors — not the United States — declared that Iraq is free of WMD. The US inclination towards unilateralism is also evident in its behaviour at the international level.
Washington has walked away from several international disarmament treaties, including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that it abrogated in December 2001.
The administration of President George W. Bush has also said it has no plans to seek ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); is not a party to the anti-landmine convention; and has rejected an inspection and verification programme for the biological weapons treaty.
As part of a new military doctrine geared to fight countries with WMD, administration said in early 2002 that it was also considering plans to develop smaller and more accurate nuclear weapons with special capabilities to destroy underground bunkers.
US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said that the only way to deter “rogue states” from using WMD “is to be clear that it would be met with a devastating response”.
Jayantha Dhanapala, UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, is disappointed by the growing trend against multilateral diplomacy to achieve disarmament.
Dhanapala points out that calls in 1978 for the prevention of an arms race in outer space are now being overtaken by concrete plans for the weaponization of outer space.
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, says that by abandoning a robust UN inspection regime, the Bush administration “has bypassed the instruments of collective security and used massive military might to attack a state that it considers a potential threat”.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.
