June 8, 2002
UN Security Council members and the chief UN arms inspector have expressed hope that forthcoming talks between the United Nations and Iraq would be "decisive" and lead to the return of weapons experts after a more than three-year hiatus. But Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, told reporters there were no positive signs from Iraq yet on the inspectors but "we hope that it will come."
The arms experts, key to suspending 12-year-old UN sanctions against Iraq, left shortly before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998, and have not been allowed to return since. The third round of high-level talks since March between the United Nations and Iraq will be in Vienna on July 3-4.
"I think there was positive support by the council for the continuation (of the talks), and at the same time a hope that this third round will be a decisive one and will lead to an invitation for inspections," Blix said.
"There is a wish that one would come to results and that is shared all around in the council," Blix said after briefing the council on how he was organising teams to check if Baghdad still had weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. officials have said that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would be reluctant to continue discussions with a delegation led by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri if there were no positive signs in Vienna.
"It is expected that during or after the meeting there would be an announcement on letting the inspectors in," said one American. "Otherwise why continue the talks?"
But British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said there was no talk about stopping discussions after Vienna, although it was time for the issue to be resolved.
"It's time to get some results from those talks. We don't want them to stretch out. But no one is going to say this is the last round," he said.
Blix, who had attended the previous meetings in New York, said Iraq had posed questions on the inspections, which showed an interest in how they would be conducted. "At the same time I must be frank and say that they have not yet made any invitation for inspections," he said.
Iraqi UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri, in a recent interview, said Baghdad was ready to accept the return of weapons inspectors "in principle" – albeit with conditions.
One of them was the route toward lifting sanctions, another is the Bush administration's threats to topple President Saddam Hussein and a third is the no-flight zones the United States and Britain have imposed over parts of Iraq.
"We have received some answers but not for the most important questions: the horizon for the lifting of sanctions, secondly, the American and the British threat on Iraq and thirdly, the no-fly zones," Aldouri said.
Annan is not authorised by the Security Council to negotiate on these issues.
Nevertheless, Blix is getting ready for a possible return of the inspectors, with his teams having studied satellite photos over the past year.
He told the council he needed more permanent staff at UN headquarters as some of them would have to go to Iraq. He has some 230 inspectors on standby in various parts of the world, most but not all of whom would still be available.
"We feel that the discussions have gone so far that it is immediate and prudent for us to increase our readiness and that we do by taking on some more permanent staff here in New York," Blix said. "Once we go to Iraq we will have to send some people from New York there."
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