By Cameron Stewart
January 13, 1999
THE chief UN weapons inspector, Richard Butler, has admitted that UNSCOM is unlikely to continue in its present form after the storm of controversy over its role in Iraq.
Mr Butler also announced that he had suspended flights over Iraq by US U-2 spy planes until the UN Security Council decided the future of his inspection regime.
The decision to suspend the US flights – which provide valuable intelligence information on Iraq's weapons facilities – was made to head off any new claims that UNSCOM was spying on behalf of the US.
"I'm suspending these for the time being" so there will be "no opportunity for a misinterpretation of events", Mr Butler said.
His comments coincided with a new military confrontation in Iraq when two US airforce planes flying in the UN-declared "no fly zone" fired missiles at two Iraqi air defence installations.
The US said the separate incidents occurred as the planes retaliated after being illuminated by radar from the Iraqi air defence installations. It was the fifth clash in "no fly zones" since December 28.
Mr Butler admitted that UNSCOM was unlikely to emerge from the present UN Security Council review unscathed.
"I think that the possibility is real that there will be a further development of UNSCOM," Mr Butler said.
"It will be a bit different from the past . . . UNSCOM modernised, if you will."
But he said UNSCOM would not be killed off despite the hostility towards it by some members of the UN Security Council.
"UNSCOM is not dead. UNSCOM is alive and well in New York."
The Security Council is considering proposals for the future of UNSCOM. Iraq has refused to co-operate with the weapons inspection body in its present form. One option being considered by the council is for UNSCOM to stop on-the-ground inspections and instead set up a more detailed electronic monitoring system to check Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions which require it to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking at a conference in Washington, Mr Butler said that such an operation "would have to be bigger in scope, range and staffing. It's a major job."
Mr Butler yesterday re-affirmed that he had no plans to resign despite renewed calls from Russia and China to do so.
Calls for his resignation have intensified in the wake of damaging reports last week that UNSCOM worked hand-in-hand with US intelligence in Iraq and that the US might have used UNSCOM in order to conduct its own spying on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
France has called for a long-term monitoring regime without active inspections accompanied by an easing of the oil embargo under strict conditions.
However, the US has said there will be no easing of the economic embargo on Iraq until it can prove that it has destroyed its chemical and biological weapons programs.
The US says it does not want to see UNSCOM weakened.
