UN intends to close arms inspection unit for Iraq
Source: Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, March 7 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council moved on Wednesday to shut down its weapons inspection commission for Iraq but has not decided yet how to preserve the extensive experience of its staff and database. South Africa's U.N. ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, the current council president said the United States, Britain and Iraq were drawing up a resolution, which diplomats expect this month, that would close the commission charged with dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "There was consensus in the council that the work of the mandate must be terminated and the file must be closed," Kumalo told reporters. But he said "the council would like to further discuss how to retain the expertise and especially the human expertise of the people that have worked in the last four years in this area of weapons of mass destruction." The staff of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Agency, known as UNMOVIC, had not been allowed to return to Iraq by the United States since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Their inspectors left Iraq just before the war and since then have worked on compiling a detailed data base using satellite photos to keep track of equipment with dual civilian and military uses and survey the looting of former Iraqi arms sites. Iraq has been lobbying the Security Council for years to have all money remaining in the oil-for-food accounts transferred to a development fund and to help pay its arrears in dues to the United Nations. But the United States, which found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, had refused to discuss the issue until 2005. Last November, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said UNMOVIC "no longer has a mission" and "it is spending Iraqi money and tying up other funds that could be returned to the government of Iraq." UNMOVIC has a professional staff of 34 in New York from 19 countries, two local employees in Baghdad and a field office in Cyprus. It spends a bit over $10 million a year. It was created late in 1999 as a successor to the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM. But Saddam Hussein's government barred it from Iraq until shortly before the invasion.
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