By Barbara Crosette
New York Times
December 18, 1998
UNITED NATIONS -- In the last two days, as United Nations arms inspectors abruptly left Iraq and military strikes began, divisions in the Security Council have reverted to cold war patterns, diplomats said on Thursday.
Russia has demanded the resignation of the chief weapons inspector, accusing him of being dishonorable in his dealings with the Council and colluding with Washington to set Iraq up for attack. China has taken a similar line, and has also assailed the American bombing.
The criticism of the chief inspector, Richard Butler, executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, began mounting before the first American airstrikes on Wednesday.
Iraq has long campaigned against him. But the most recent irritant was Butler's quick withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday of all his inspectors and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iraqi nuclear programs, without Security Council permission.
Butler acted after a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, the American representative to the United Nations, and a discussion with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had also spoken to Burleigh.
Butler's quick action was in stark contrast to those of other United Nations officials, who waited a day and then decided not to evacuate more than 100 relief workers who were also in Baghdad, raising concerns among some officials that their colleagues could be hurt in bombing raids or held hostage by the Iraqis if the situation became desperate.
Annan made the decision to leave the relief workers behind. Aides say he did not want to send the wrong political message by not only circumventing the Security Council but by also appearing to desert the Iraqis the relief workers had come to help.
Thursday, for the second day in a row, the relief workers remained trapped in the Canal Hotel, a former hotel school that serves as the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
"It won't be any news if I said that the current situation is not excellent," said Benon Sevan, who directs the non-disarmament Iraq programs for the United Nations in New York. "I have 134 staff members sitting in the basement and the corridors of the Canal Hotel. It is a strain on people to sit closeted in a small place."
But Sevan echoed the Secretary General's contention that withdrawing would be sending the wrong message. The crisis in Baghdad has not affected more than 200 United Nations employees working in the autonomous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. But it has led to the withdrawal of most border-crossing inspectors employed by Lloyds Register of Shipping, a private customs service, who have been checking the arrival of goods purchased under the oil-for-food program. Without the inspectors' authentication of shipments, supplies get bottlenecked at the borders of Syria and Jordan -- a Turkish crossing remains open -- and the United Nations cannot release money to pay for needed supplies.
For the second time in two days, Russia has called meetings of the Security Council to discuss the American strikes on Iraq, the damage they may be causing and the juxtaposition of the military campaign with Butler's report on Tuesday night accusing Iraq of breaking its promise to comply with arms inspections.
The Russian delegation was infuriated by the fact that the American airstrikes began just as the debate was getting under way. "The military strike was delivered precisely at the time when the Security Council was discussing the Iraq issue," a statement from the Russian Federation said today. "The entire system of international security, with the U.N. and the Security Council as the centerpiece, has been undermined."
Today, Russia's representative to the United Nations, Sergey Lavrov, said he asked for Council agreement on how to bring the situation back from open warfare to the political and diplomatic arena.
