June 23, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 07, 1428

UNITED NATIONS, June 22: The United States and Britain have circulated a draft resolution in the Security Council that would immediately terminate the work of UN inspectors tasked with monitoring and dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP on Friday would “terminate immediately” the mandate of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), charged with locating and dismantling Iraq's chemical and biological weapons as well as its long-range missiles.

The draft, which is to be discussed by the 15-member Security Council next Tuesday, would also shut down the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, responsible with dismantling the country's nuclear weapons program.

Following the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq after the end the US-led invasion in 2003, Washington has for the past two years pressed for an end to all related UN inspection work there.

In a recent joint letter to the president of the Security Council, the United States and Britain stated that “all appropriate steps have been taken to secure, remove, disable ... eliminate or destroy all of Iraq's known weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres.” UNMOVIC was set up in 1999 under Security Council Resolution 1284 to verify that Iraq no longer had WMDs and had complied with its obligations not to acquire new proscribed arms.

UNMOVIC inspectors pulled out of Iraq on March 18, 2003, immediately before the start of the US-led invasion, and were not allowed to return.

The work of hunting down Iraq's suspected WMDs was then taken over by a US-led coalition body, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), but no weapons were found, seriously undermining what had been the major US and British argument for going to war.

The US-British draft would urge Baghdad to continue to implement its constitutional commitment “to the non-proliferation, non-development, non-production and non-use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and associated equipment.” In line with a request from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the draft would direct UN chief Ban Ki-moon to transfer to Iraq's development fund all remaining unallocated funds drawn from the country's oil revenues to finance UNMOVIC work.

UNMOVIC, which by the end of last month had a core staff of 34 professionals from 19 nationalities, spends roughly one million dollars a month.

It succeeded the United Nations Special Commission for Iraq (UNSCOM), which itself grew out of the UN inspection process established after the 1991 Gulf war in which US-led forces booted invading Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.

The US-British draft would also ask Ban “to take all necessary measures” to secure UNMOVIC” archives and in particular ensure “that sensitive proliferation information or information provided in confidence by member states is kept under strict control.”—AFP