Bargaining Concerning Iraq. Final Stage

English-American alliance in the UN Security Council attacks. France surrendered, Russia and China regrouping forces
Iraq’s report about its weapons programs seems to be incomplete, however, Baghdad cannot be yet accused of obvious violation of the UN Security Council resolution #1441. This was stated by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in an interview to BBC radio. When he was asked if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein violated the above mentioned document, the chief British diplomat answered: “Not yet.” In his words, he believes that the UN Security Council and Great Britain will come to a conclusion that the report contains lots of great problems. As provisional analysis of the document revealed, Iraq didn’t provide “a complete and precise” report as it had been required. The USA is expected to pass its verdict on the problem tomorrow; but it is very easy to guess already today what the verdict will be. Washington always openly demonstrated its skeptical attitude concerning the work of the UNMOVIC team in Iraq and demanded to punish Iraq severely. Today chief UN inspector Hans Blix will give his initial view on the declaration on weapons programs issued by Iraq. The initial version of the declaration on 3.500 pages was developed under the guidance of the UN chief inspector Hand Blix. Another document on 2.000 pages was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); it provides information about Iraq’s nuclear programs. Yesterday IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said that the UN inspectors discovered no evidence of Baghdad’s recommencement of work on nuclear programs. It is not clear yet what the team headed by Hans Blix managed to discover in Iraq.

To all appearances, we will soon witness another bargaining in the UN Security Council. The British-American alliance will try to overpower the uncompromising opponents of war with Iraq (China, Russia and France). Some steps in this direction have been already taken.

According to Germany’s Tageszeitung, Iraq reported in its declaration that one Russian and three Chinese companies had violated the UN resolutions imposed on Iraq after the intrusion in Kuwait in 1990 and supplied weapons and war technologies to the country. A direct blow against these two opponents of war in Iraq will considerably weaken their positions. I would like to add that together with the Russian and Chinese companies Baghdad mentioned also American, British, French and German organizations that violated the sanctions. As is reported in the declaration, some of the companies supplied weapons and nuclear technologies to Iraq since 1975. Baghdad’s declaration contains 80 companies and research institutes from Germany, 24 from the USA, three from China, 17 from Great Britain, 8 from France and 6 from Russia. According to the German newspaper, these countries supplied Iraq with weapons and technologies starting with the mid-1970s till the Gulf War. Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Sweden are also referred to those countries that cooperated with Iraq. However, the report doesn’t specify if these companies also supplied weapons and technologies to Iraq like Russia and China. France, which companies were also mentioned on the list, has evidently surrendered without battle.

Despite the statement on its reluctance to join a probable war against Iraq, the government of France came to a conclusion that Iraq’s statements concerning weapons disagree with the reality so much that Paris may even soon join the UN-approved operation against Baghdad. This was reported by the International Herald Tribune newspaper with reference to French governmental sources on Thursday. The newspaper’s source close to the governmental circles studied the declaration made by Iraq and reported that the document was “incomplete and inexact.” In this connection, Paris thinks that Baghdad could misuse its declaration as “a final opportunity to meet it commitments in the sphere of weapons.”

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/accidents/8809-irak_inspektory_oon_doklad_sb_oon/

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