Unscom fears what it has not seen in Iraq

Despite the efforts of UN weapons inspectors, Iraq may still have long-range missiles with biological and chemical warheads that could "devastate any city in the region". Alan George reports.

LONDON: Despite the efforts of UN weapons inspectors, Iraq may still have long-range missiles with biological and chemical warheads that could "devastate any city in the region".

The latest six-month report from the UN Special Commission (Unscom), the agency established after the Gulf crisis to dismantle Baghdad's non-conventional weapons programs, says it "cannot state that Iraq has accounted for all weapons, components and capabilities" proscribed by UN Resolution 687 of 1991 - the Gulf war ceasefire resolution.

While much has been achieved "what is still not accounted for cannot be neglected", it says. "Even a limited inventory of long- range missiles would be a source of deep concern if those missiles were filled with the most deadly of chemical nerve agents, VX."

According to Unscom, "if one single missile warhead were filled with the biological warfare agent Anthrax, many millions of lethal doses could be spread in an attack on any city in the region".

It nevertheless asserts that the agency's inspection and monitoring programs, and those operated in the nuclear field by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), mean that "not much is unknown" about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its long-range missile projects.

The biggest gaps in knowledge relate to Baghdad's extensive biological weapons program, which was unmasked only in the past two years.

Although Resolution 687 requires Baghdad to co-operate fully with Unscom, the report reaffirms that, having accepted the resolution, "Iraq initiated a policy of systematic concealment, denial and masking of the most important aspects of its proscribed weapons and related capabilities".

This policy has, if anything, intensified in the past six months, which have seen "a pattern of efforts on the part of Iraq to restrict the Commission's monitoring activities".

The problems have centered on Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), the governmental agency established to co- operate with Unscom. The latter "has often discovered that (weapons and other) facilities have provided accurate information to the NMD but this information has then been manipulated so that the monitoring declarations presented to the Commission are misleading and inaccurate".

The NMD provides "minders" whose task is to accompany UN inspectors and ensure that they gain full access to sites and co- operation from local officials. In reality, "the NMD has sought to constrain the Commission's activities by restricting the times and days during which it would respond to requests for minders. When minders from the NMD escort the Commission's inspectors, they have often interrupted interviews and instructed Iraqi site personnel to provide wrong information or to refuse to answer relevant questions".

The Unscom report notes that Baghdad has also implemented a "new policy whereby instructions have been issued to all sites and facilities that access be refused to the inspectors unless representatives of the NMD are present".

Unscom's head, Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus, has formally protested to senior Iraqi officials about these violations of the Commission's rights.

Iraq has also failed to provide information about sites and facilities where declarable equipment of a dual-use nature is located. In the past six months Unscom personnel have inspected sites where several hundred pieces of dual-use equipment have not been declared.

The report applauds the assistance which the agency has received from many governments in its efforts to unravel Iraq's military procurement activities. But it records that a small number of governments have chosen so far not to respond to the Commission's repeated and in some cases long-standing requests for information.

Unscom has declined to reveal the "guilty" states but they are understood to include Egypt and North Korea.

-- Observer