WASHINGTON, 21 November 2002 — As UN inspectors arrived in Baghdad Reuters reported that the head of the team, Hans Blix, said he "could not rule out the possibility that there might be spies on his team. He added that any intelligence agents would be ordered off the group."
There is good reason for his doubts. According to a Washington Post report three years ago, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan "obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that… United States intelligence services infiltrated agents and espionage equipment… in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the UN agency. "It used to disguise its work, according to US government employees and documents describing the classified operation," said the Washington Post article "US Spied on Iraq Via UN." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/march99/unscom2.htm)
Susan Wright, a historian of science at the University of Michigan, specializing in disarmament policy and biological warfare, spoke with Arab News about the new UN inspection team, UNMOVIC (the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission).
"It is well-known that UNSCOM was used for purposes that were not in the mandate, but espionage," she said, adding this was one of the complicating factors that provided the Iraq with a reason to expel the inspectors.
"A major challenge for Hans Blix, the chairman of UNSCOM’s successor, UNMOVIC, will be to avoid both the reality and the perception that his new agency is being similarly hijacked by the United States," said Wright. "Blix has said that UNMOVIC has 30 inspectors from the United States, more than any other country."
The problem is if the Iraqis detect that the UN inspection organization is being used for espionage once again, it will put Iraq in a double bind, said Wright.
"If Iraq goes along, it would know that its defenses are being scrutinized. If it resists, its resistance may be used as a trigger for war by the US government," said Wright, author of "The Hijacking of UNSCOM" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
To avoid a crisis, Wright says the organizational lines between the mandate of the UN inspectors and the interests of individual states, especially the United States, must be kept pristinely clear.
UNMOVIC’s organizational lines are clear, she said. "Currently all the UN inspectors are full-time UN inspectors, whereas before… the lines were blurred, and in addition, the US was paying for UNSCOM, so in many ways, UNSCOM was influenced by US policy."
According to Wright, it helps that chief inspector Hans Blix is highly regarded as former director general of the International Atomic Energy Commission.
She said it is difficult to know if Iraq has been developing weapons of mass destruction (during the three-year hiatus that UN inspection teams have been out of Iraq) "especially in the biological areas, as virtually anything is dual purpose — it can be used for peaceful purposes, or for weapons.
"So without people on the ground, it is important not to come to any conclusions about whether Iraq has, or has not, been developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons over the last few years," said Wright, editor of the newly-released "Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives."
Her biggest fear is that the inspectors will not be given a chance to inspect.
"Already the Pentagon says there has been a ‘material breach’ regarding the shooting at US planes patrolling the so-called no-fly zone."
Such language is ‘red flag,’ said Wright.
"‘Material breach’ is inflammatory, because it is a trigger for the US to go to war against Iraq. I think it is very difficult for the inspections to be conducted in an atmosphere when one country is already saying the Iraqis are not complying — when the inspections haven’t even gotten off the ground. And this will make the Iraqis very mad."
Wright said the inspections should be carried out "in a very orderly manner. Any decisions should be made by the UN Security Council, after they’ve received the reports from UNMOVIC." These, she said, must be considered collectively. "It is not appropriate for one country to want to influence the environment in which decisions are made."
Her greatest concern is that "some small incident will be used as an excuse" by the US to launch a war in Iraq.
"The only reason for war is as a defensive measure. We may not like Saddam Hussein, but he has not attacked another country since the Gulf War, he hasn’t even threatened another country. Iraq has also been paying enormous reparations to Kuwait which is something overlooked by the US press."
Wright said it is realistic to think that a war in Iraq "would be enormously destabilizing and plays in the hands of radicals in the Middle East. The Iraqis have lived through a war that lasted through most of the 1980s, then the Gulf War, then the horrible sanctions that mainly hurt the civilians, and then we impose another war. In the eyes of the world, this is punitive and cruel treatment," said Wright.
