Stewart Stogel
Saturday, Dec. 21, 2002

Leaving U.N. headquarters after a closed Security Council meeting on Iraq, Ambassador John Negroponte met reporters:

"We informed the council that we were deeply disappointed that Iraq has again defied the council's demands and chosen deception and concealment over full disclosure. The December 7 declaration clearly shows that Iraq has spurned its last opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations. ... These constitute material omissions, which constitute another material breach."

"How can someone be in material breach when the [Iraqi weapons]declarations are still being translated?" asked Mauritius' council representative, Jagdish Koonjul.

Syrian Ambassador Mikhali Wehbe added that his country would not follow or even consider the U.S. position until Damascus receives all of Iraq's weapons documents, unedited.

The U.S. and United Kingdom successfully pressured the council to limit unedited copies of Iraq's declarations to the so-called Perm 5, which also includes China, Russia and France. Washington insisted that a full circulation of the Iraqi documents could put the council in violation of several arms control treaties.

The closed meeting Thursday at U.N. headquarters was to hear a preliminary impression of Iraq's declarations. Chief weapons inspector Dr. Hans Blix and the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, spent more than 90 minutes briefing the 15-member Security Council.

"It was very businesslike, very thorough," explained one of the participants.

"We are all under increasing pressure, but we need to move slowly, despite what the United States wants," added another council ambassador.

Neither Blix, ElBaradei or any other council member, including Britain, concluded that Baghdad was in material breach of the latest U.N. resolution, yet.

NewsMax has obtained copies of "talking points" used by Blix and ElBaradei in the council meeting.

Blix told the council:

"It remains to analyze in detail how much is clarified by the new declaration and supporting material."

ElBaradei added:

"... the recent declarations appear to be consistent with the coherent picture of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program [previously] drawn by the IAEA."

British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock had a guarded assessment:

"The declaration was an opportunity to deal with these questions. That it [Iraq] has not done so, we find deeply disappointing. There are a whole number of areas that should have been accounted for in this declaration that have not been accounted for and that amounts in our view to a rejection by Iraq of the opportunity that Resolution 1441 afforded ... and therefore there is further work to do."

Greenstock, unlike his U.S. counterpart, refused to coin the Iraqi declarations as a material breach.

That position was taken by other diplomats to mean that the Security Council has not yet moved to the point where it will consider military action against Baghdad.

While Negroponte and Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq has lost its last opportunity to avoid a war, the U.S. may be alone on that point, at least for now.

Anything to Help the Dictator

U.N. sources confirm that the majority of council members, Blix and ElBaradei included, "are inclined" to allow Baghdad "to add" information to its latest final (nine in all) weapons disclosure.

The real deadline, say these sources, is Jan. 27, 2003 when Blix and ElBaradei are obligated to send the council a full formal assessment of Iraq's declarations.

While the U.S. may try to block any further "additions" or "clarifications" by Baghdad, diplomatic sources speculate that Washington will fail.

The wild card could be the January deadline.

The council has requested that Blix and ElBaradei submit their formal reports by Jan. 27. It leaves open the option of their reports being submitted before then.

Sources in Blix's office tell NewsMax that no report would be forthcoming before the arms chief consults with his board of commissioners on Jan. 21. After that, anything can happen.

As he left U.N. headquarters, Britain's Greenstock summed up the crisis:

"There is still work to be done by the inspectors on the ground. I am pointing out that the test of Iraq cooperating with them now is that much higher and greater because this declaration is inadequate."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
United Nations
Editor's note:
Saddam Hussein’s race to make a nuclear bomb