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U.S. Backs a 3-Part Review of Iraq-U.N. Relations
By Barbara Crossette
New York Times January 28, 1999 UNITED NATIONS -- The United States threw its support Wednesday behind a Canadian plan that would convene three expert panels to review all aspects of Iraq's relations with the United Nations in an effort to break a Security Council policy stalemate.
The exercise sounds a lot like the comprehensive review first proposed last year as a reward to Iraq for cooperating with inspectors. Now it appears to be the minimal course of action the Council may be able to agree on after American and British air strikes in December.
The reviews of disarmament compliance, the condition of Iraqi people living under sanctions and an accounting of the missing since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- 600 Kuwaitis and others -- and Kuwaiti property would form the basis for making larger decisions later. Arab nations are particularly insistent that Kuwaiti claims be part of the review.
"I'm hoping that in the next couple of days we will be in a position to know whether this bridge we are trying to build will hold the weight of the Council," said Robert Fowler, Canada's representative on the Security Council, after a meeting Wednesday. "But I would reiterate the fact that what we're talking about is procedure," Fowler said. "We're not now negotiating what is going to happen in Iraq. What we're talking about is how to get to a discussion of what's going to happen in Iraq, and on that I'm fairly confident."
The United States representative, Peter Burleigh, endorsed the Canadian proposal, now jointly proposed with Argentina, before the session.
"Constituting these assessment panels, as has been proposed by the Canadians and the Argentinians, is the way to go now because there is a deep division in the Council and going to the longer term questions now is not useful," he said.
Burleigh said that in this context, the report submitted to the Council this week by the United Nations Special Commission would play a part in the assessment.
Russia has rejected the report, saying it will no longer deal with the Special Commission, known as Unscom, or its executive chairman, Richard Butler. The Russians, backed by China and Malaysia, also blocked distribution of the Unscom report, which was sent to the Council on Monday. Wednesday the Netherlands and Slovenia formally requested a lifting of the ban, and the report can now be published.
Wednesday Sergey Lavrov, the Russian representative, did not rule out an assessment process, although Russia wants an unambiguous lifting of sanctions and a greater role for Secretary General Kofi Annan in any deliberations on the future of Iraqi policy. But speaking to reporters he cautioned that there are still very diverse proposals on the table.
"We're not discussing any specific schemes," he said. "We're not yet in agreement on the concept, so before discussing options we have to agree on concepts. We're not there yet."
Celso L. N. Amorim, Brazil's representative on the Council and this month's Council president, said Wednesday that he hoped the Council could agree on establishing panels within the next few days, but he acknowledged that getting consensus on the disarmament review would be difficult.
Canada had first proposed giving the task to a combined panel from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations agency monitoring Iraqi compliance on nuclear weapons; the Special Commission, and the United Nations disarmament department.
The department's Under Secretary General, Jayantha Dhanapala, would have, under the original Canadian plan, served as chairman, thereby giving the United Nations Secretariat pre-eminence over the Special Commission, an independent panel created by the Security Council. Russia, France and China liked that plan. The United States and Britain were less enthusiastic.
Argentina then proposed an amendment making Amorim, a former Brazilian Foreign Minister, chairman of the disarmament panel, returning the oversight to the Security Council. But the role of Unscom still remains a problem for Russia, which also wants at least one assessment panel to visit Iraq.
Fowler of Canada said Wednesday that his aim in drafting and then amending his Government's proposal was to get the effectively paralyzed Council moving.
Since American and British air strikes in mid-December, there have been no arms inspections in Iraq.
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