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Arms
Experts Spied on Iraq: Swede Inspector
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"We
will abide by whatever the [Security] Council decides," said
Blix
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STOCKHOLM,
October 4 (IslamOnline & News agencies) – As some leaked U.N.
reports revealed that Washington intends to use U.N. weapons
inspections to occupy Iraq, a Swede who worked as an inspector said
that some United Nations inspectors looking for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq in the 1990s probably spied on the Arab country
for their governments.
"There
were episodes you could sense were strange. One team member made too
many copies of documents. Then there were those who went to their
embassies at night although they were not really allowed to do
so," Ake Sellstrom told Swedish public service SVT television
news Thursday, October 3.
Sellstrom
was employed by the U.N. weapons inspection organization UNSCOM led by
American Scott Ritter, whom Baghdad repeatedly accused of spying. The
inspectors were forced to leave Iraq in December 1998, news agencies
reported.
A
divided U.N. Security Council is currently debating whether a new team
of inspectors, now called UNMOVIC and led by Swede Hans Blix, should
travel to Iraq and begin a new search for Baghdad's alleged chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons.
Sellstrom
said information obtained by means of electronic surveillance of Iraqi
security forces' communications had clearly fallen into wrong hands,
such as the U.S. and Israeli military, during his time with UNSCOM.
Some
targets checked out by the weapons inspectors were bombed by the
United States and its allies just a week later, Sellstrom said.
Earlier
Thursday, Jean Pascal Zanders, head of chemical and biological warfare
studies at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI), told a news conference that new Iraqi weapons inspections
would be extremely difficult to carry out.
"If
they don't come up with something in one or two months, then the
United States will say 'This shows that inspections don't work' while
Iraq will say 'You see, we don't have any weapons'."
"We
need inspections over a large timeframe," Zanders said.
Meanwhile,
an early return of arms inspectors to Iraq seemed unlikely Friday,
October 4, amid continuing divisions in the U.N. Security Council over
the use of force against Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported.
"There
is an understanding in the Council that the inspectors cannot go back
under existing resolutions," deputy U.S. ambassador James
Cunningham said after chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix briefed the
Council for more than two hours Thursday.
Ambassadors
from the five veto-wielding permanent Council members – the United
States, Britain, France, Russia and China – met privately with Blix
later.
Washington
and London want to send Blix to Iraq with a "tough new"
mandate, backed by the threat of immediate military action if Iraq
refuses to cooperate with his inspection teams.
France
wants an initial resolution defining the inspectors' mission, but says
the Security Council must pass a second resolution if it wants to use
force.
Russia
and China feel that existing resolutions are adequate regarding the
inspections, which were terminated four years ago.
Blix
and International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed El-Baradei
were due to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice Friday in Washington.
Asked
what he would discuss with the U.S. officials, Blix replied: "I
hope to hear something of what their planning is and we will tell them
what our planning is."
Blix
said he would be bound by the Security Council's wishes.
"It
would be awkward if we were doing inspections and a new mandate with
changed directives arrived. We will abide by whatever the Council
decides," he said.
"I
hope it would not be a long delay. We are ready to go at the earliest
practical opportunity."
Russia
repeated Friday it did not support a British-U.S. draft resolution on
Iraq that seeks tougher new ground rules on inspections backed by the
threat of force.
"The
existing U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Iraqi question are
quite enough, and there is no need to draft new resolution whose
demands step outside existing ones," Deputy Foreign Minister Yury
Fedotov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Meanwhile
the U.S. Congress was set to step up debate on Iraq Friday after the
House of Representatives moved closer to granting President George W.
Bush authorization to use military force against Baghdad.
Bush
has repeatedly warned of moving unilaterally to oust his Iraqi
counterpart Saddam Hussein if the U.N. Security Council does not
sanction war on Iraq.
"Saddam
has got to understand, the United Nations must know, that the will of
this country is strong," Bush said in a speech in Washington
Thursday.
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