WASHINGTON, Jan 23: Iraq cannot be trusted to disarm, but only the UN Security Council can decide when to end arms inspections, top UN arms inspector Hans Blix said in an interview made public Sunday.
The inspection process is taking longer than expected but should be allowed to continue if it is backed by the threat of force and if Iraq cooperates in a meaningful way, Blix told Time magazine.
“Of course they have no credibility. If they had any, they certainly lost it in 1991. I don’t see that they have acquired any credibility,” Blix said.
“There has to be solid evidence of everything, and if there is not evidence or you can’t find it, I simply say sorry, I don’t find any evidence and I cannot guarantee or recommend any confidence. It might be there, it might not be there.”
Blix told the newsweekly he might never be able to account for the chemical and biological weapons Baghdad was known to have produced and now says it destroyed. He also said he found it “a bit odd” that Baghdad claims to have no records of their destruction.
“They’ve been one of the best organized regimes in the Arab world,” Blix said.
“But then if they destroyed their documents with that efficiency, there might be relatively little left. But I think they’ve been good in certain parts. And when they’ve had need of something to show, then they have been able to do so.”
He refused to say however if Iraq was in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which gave Baghdad a final chance to disarm under threat of possible military action when it was unanimously approved November 8.
“In the last resort, this is a political decision” for the council to make, he said.
Blix is due to report to the council by Saturday on the inspectors’ progress. Saturday also is the deadline set by Blix for Iraq to begin destroying its stock of al-Samoud 2 missiles, which UN inspectors have determined exceed the permitted 150-kilometer (93-mile) range limits.
Meanwhile, as the United States pressed forward with its campaign to win UN authorization for an attack on Iraq, Baghdad pledged continued cooperation with inspectors.
“Iraq continues to provide all the facilities to the UN inspections ... in order to help achieve peace,” presidential adviser General Amer al-Saadi was quoted as saying by the state news agency INA.
“Iraq is still implementing and continues to work with UN Security Council resolutions.”
Iraq tests engine: Iraq test-fired a rocket engine on Sunday to show UN inspectors the al-Samoud 2 missile could not violate a 1991 range limit set by the United Nations.
UN arms experts stood a few metres away to watch the test at the Falluja site 70 kms west of Baghdad.
“It is an experimental test of the Iraqi al-Samoud missile. This is the fifth time that the arms inspectors see such a test,” Colonel Ali Jasim Hussein told Reuters Television.
UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has ordered Iraq to start destroying its al-Samoud 2 missiles by March 1, saying they exceed UN limits. Baghdad says the missile was designed to stay within the permitted 150-km range.
Iraq said on Sunday that Blix’s demand was under “serious” study and that it hoped to settle the issue through “cooperation and agreement” between the two parties.
“We are studying the letter of Mr Blix about destroying the missiles in depth and in a serious and comprehensive way,” General Husam Mohammad Amin, head of Iraq’s weapons monitoring, told a news conference.
“We hope that this issue will be resolved without interference from the Americans and the British. I believe that we will be able to resolve this issue without any intervention by those with evil intentions,” he added.
He refused to answer direct questions on whether Iraq would destroy the missiles. “Destroying these missiles will affect our defence capabilities but would not completely terminate them.”
Amin said Baghdad believed it “was not necessary” for Iraqi scientists to be interviewed abroad — a nagging demand by the UN which insists experts on banned weapons should be debriefed on neutral ground to avoid government intimidation.—AFP/Reuters