08 March 1999

UNSCOM CHIEF: SECURITY COUNCIL UNITY ON IRAQI WEAPONS ESSENTIAL

(Butler says he did not approve spy operations) (1140)
By Judy Aita
USIA United Nations Correspondent

New York -- The major obstacle in ridding Iraq of its banned chemical
and biological weapons and ballistic missiles is a divided Security
Council, not allegations that UN weapons inspectors were spies, the
head of the UN special Commission overseeing the destruction of Iraqi
weapons (UNSCOM) says.

UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler also denied that he approved
the use of UN weapons inspection teams as a cover for US spying on
Iraq.

At a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations March 3, Butler said
that he did not know of the installation of any US spying devices in
Iraq during UNSCOM operations. "Nothing can be simpler. I know what I
approved of and I know what I didn't approve of," he said.

"I always approved of things which I thought served our disarmament
purposes; if they did not, I didn't approve of them," Butler added.

UNSCOM has been unable to work in Iraq since late last year. Iraq's
refusal to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors resulted in US and
British attacks on weapons installations in Iraq in December 1998. The
Security Council has made no decision on how to proceed in the face of
Iraq's defiance. It has set up a panel chaired by council member
Ambassador Celso Amorim of Brazil to review the situation and make
recommendations by April 15 on how to proceed.

The question and answer session with the Council on Foreign Relations
was Butler's first public comments on the issue since the spying
allegations appeared a few weeks ago.

Pressed about the consequences of such actions if they prove to be
true, Butler rejected suggestions that the arms control regime set up
by UNSCOM should be scrapped or that the Security Council should
abolish the commission.

The biggest threat to the successful disarmament of Iraq is disunity
in the Security Council, the UNSCOM chief said.

There is a "very difficult situation in the Security Council because
it is the one thing it shouldn't be -- divided. The only beneficiary
of a divided Security Council is a recalcitrant Iraq," the UNSCOM
chief said.

The "core issue" still remains "the weapons of mass destruction that
Iraq obtained and created," Butler pointed out. "Iraq is in defiance
of the council today saying they don't want to do that any more ...
that is a real issue."

"You don't throw out the whole regime we have developed for one flaw,"
Butler argued. "We have led the world in the practical, hands-on
techniques for getting this job done and it has had brilliant results.
The fact this stuff may have happened ... shouldn't lead to the
throwing away of what we have done."

Butler pointed out that UNSCOM has received assistance from 40 nations
since its inception in 1991.

UNSCOM staff "is sent by governments and some come from defense
intelligence agencies. That is where their weapons experts come from,"
he pointed out. "If you want a weapons inspector, you don't ask for a
clerk from the ministry of public health."

Rejecting suggestions that actions by UN weapons inspectors have been
the cause of friction between Iraq and UNSCOM, Butler said, "let's get
something straight: We faced a wall of deceit from Iraq. Iraq was
obliged under the resolutions passed by the Security Council, which
... are international law, to tell us the truth about its weapons. It
never did."

"Instead, it obstructed and concealed and put up a barrier against our
legitimate attempts to find those weapons," he said. "Yes, we employed
technologies to crack that wall of deceit. That's the perspective in
which this has to be seen."

Butler noted that over the years he has received many suggestions from
staff and governments on how to crack that wall of deceit and
technologies that might be employed. "I rejected some because they
would be the subject of potential misinterpretation. I wanted to keep
this clean. And I am satisfied with that record," he said.

"If other people piggy-backed on ... us when they helped with some of
those technologies, go ask them about it, but I didn't approve of that
nor did my predecessor," he said.

What can be hurt by the allegations of spying under the cover of
UNSCOM, Butler said, are the verifications regimes of arms control
treaties.

"If people think that by entering in good faith verification of arms
control treaties there is going to be this back-door stuff ... then
we've got a serious problem," he said.

Butler said it is too early to assess what damage the news reports and
an upcoming book by former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter will have on
the future of the special commission.

Much "depends on the propaganda level Iraq will enter into," he said.

"Iraq has been saying for a long time you guys are a bunch of spies.
That was never true. Never," Butler continued. "(Iraq) may take
comfort from those allegations, which may be unfortunate."

Such news reports "might help them get themselves off the hook" of
complying with international law, he pointed out.

Butler predicted that "we will get press out of Baghdad in the next
couple of days saying, 'see, see we told you so. They always were
spies.'"

"Those hostile to the disarmament of Iraq will clearly take comfort in
this," he added.

Butler said that it is possible for Iraq to begin production of the
banned weapons now that UN weapons inspectors are no longer in the
country.

"Everything we know about their track record is that they are making
hay while the sun is shining," he said.

"It's been five months since we've been looking at their biological
and chemical laboratories and plants where equipment could be making
aspirin on the assembly line before lunch, rinsed out over lunch and
they can be making mustard (gas), VX or something after lunch," he
said.

"We don't know and that's the tragedy. We're not there, we can't see,"
Butler said.

Butler speculated that Iraq threw out the UN weapons inspectors
because UNSCOM was closing in on the weapons and programs Baghdad was
still hiding.

He pointed out that UNSCOM "gave Iraq a final list of weapons of mass
destruction of which we needed a final count ... a short list, but a
real list, in the missile, chemical and biological field and they then
threw us out."

"The logic of that behavior is that we were right and we were getting
very close to precisely the things that they retained and that they
had concealed and that they didn't want to give up," Butler said.

"That was our crime -- we were right, we were close and they threw us
out," he said.