December 19, 2002
Syria said on Thursday it had instructed its representatives at the United Nations in New York to boycott Security Council talks on Iraq's arms declaration in protest against receiving an excised copy of the text.
"The foreign ministry asked its permanent delegation in New York not to participate in the Security Council discussion regarding the Iraqi declaration on weapons of mass destruction after Syria returned yesterday the abridged copy," the official SANA news agency said.
Syria sent an excised copy of Iraq's arms declaration back to U.N. inspection commissions on Wednesday, saying it wanted the same uncensored 12,000-page version the five permanent Security Council members had received, after getting only about 3,500 pages.
A U.N. resolution passed last month gave Baghdad until December 8 to declare any weapons of mass destruction it may possess and detail its weapons programs. The United States has vowed to disarm Iraq by force unless it complied with the United Nations.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, in his first assessment of Iraq's weapons declaration, is expected to tell the Security Council on Thursday that Baghdad has left questions unanswered.
"The Syrian Arab Republic announces that it will not be a party to the conclusions that will be reached in the Security Council since it has not looked at the full copy of the Iraqi declaration," SANA said.
The council's five permanent members -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France -- obtained the full document more than a week ago.
But the other 10 elected council members received a report with material deleted that could contribute to building weapons of mass destruction and the names of foreign companies that had helped Iraq build its arsenal.
Syria's deputy U.N. ambassador, Fayssal Mekdad had been among the first 10 non-permanent council members to collect the redacted version of the Iraqi document on Tuesday from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
On Wednesday, Syrian diplomats returned it.
"This is an unacceptable discrimination," Mekdad told reporters at the time. "Either we take a full copy or we don't take anything."
He said the decision made by the council president, Alfonso Valdivieso, Colombia's U.N. ambassador, at the request of the United States was "illegal and against the procedures of the council."
"We want everybody to know we are unhappy with what happened," he said.
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