Global Policy Forum

By Michel Leclercq

In 1991, the United Nations was so confident it could disarm Iraq in a few months that chief arms inspector Rolf Ekeus of Sweden took a room in a New York hotel for a year before eventually realising an appartment rental was more in order. These days, that story is told during training sessions for members of the new mission for the disarmament of Iraq. For, despite 10 years of international sanctions, the United Nations and Baghdad are still at an impasse.

In a few weeks, UN experts will be ready to resume the arms inspections that were broken off suddenly in December 1998, just before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq to punish it for lack of cooperation. Baghdad remained fiercely opposed to the return of the inspectors, insisting it does not possess weapons of mass destruction.

As a result of the impasse, the international consensus surrounding the Gulf War has been replaced by divisions within the UN Security Council on whether to lift the broad embargo imposed on Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The United States, which aims above all to contain Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is against lifting sanctions. But Russia, France and China contend Iraq is more likely to cooperate if a clear message is given about when the embargo might be lifted.

Many diplomats and officials at the United Nations say there is no chance for a change in the status quo until the election of a new US president in November. Said one Western diplomat: "The subject is on ice until November."

In December, the Security Council said it would suspend sanctions if Baghdad cooperates fully with the new disarmament body, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). UNMOVIC replaces the controversial UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) which was accused of being used by US intelligence services to spy on Iraq.

According to Resolution 687, adopted in April 1991 in the wake of the allied victory over Iraq, sanctions will remain in place until the United Nations certifies that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction.

UNSCOM inspectors "destroyed more weapons in Iraq than the Gulf War did or any subsequent bombings," according to UNMOVIC spokesman Ewen Buchanan, who also worked with the earlier mission. "We did a lot, but obviously there's still much to be done. Nobody believes that Iraq is clean." Some experts believe Saddam Hussein took advantage of the year-and-a-half-long absence of international inspectors to replenish his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons.

"Sanctions worked well for several years; Iraq is 95 percent disarmed," said another diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But it's an open-ended system which has reached its limits," said the diplomat, arguing that while the embargo "is very harmful for the people, the regime has never been doing so well."

According to Hans von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, the embargo cannot work against a dictatorship like Saddam Hussein's.

Some say it has resulted in a humanitarian tragedy in Iraq, despite the "oil for food" program that aims to soften the effects of sanctions on Iraqi civilians by allowing Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil and use part of the profits to buy basic necessities.

Diplomats have suggested replacing the current embargo with sanctions that target the country's leaders and a long-term monitoring system to ensure that Baghdad does not rearm.

And the United Nations has learned from the impasse in Iraq: in May, on the initiative of France, it adopted a 12-month arms embargo against Ethiopia and Eritrea, the first time-limited sanctions regime ever adopted by the United Nations.