As club members will know the UN Security Council has voted today (November 8) on a Resolution sponsored by the UK and the USA which orders Iraq to give up any weapons of mass destruction. We now have a Resolution Number: UNSC 1441 which I believe will be a landmark in UN history.
Until last night diplomats in New York believed that one Council member, Syria, was likely to abstain after France accepted the latest draft and China signalled its approval. Up until last night too the Russian Ambassador had not indicated which way he would vote. These five permanent members of the UN Security Council, as you know, could have vetoed any Resolution. In the event we have a unanimous Resolution which must send a powerful message to Iraq: comply or face serious consequences. There is relief and a feeling of huge international success in New York as we speak.
A tiny change to the wording has been enough to allay the concerns of several countries that the text could give tacit approval for a unilateral US attack. The Resolution now gives a timetable for the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq and a deadline by which Baghdad must list its weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors are to report back by late February 2003.
The UK’s overriding objective in sponsoring the Resolution is the disarmament of Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction through an effective inspections regime. The UK has made the case for UN action clear in our Parliament, to our allies and to the wider world. My Prime Minister and President Bush have both said that the UN had to be the means of dealing with this problem – not of avoiding it and that the UN has either to enforce the writ of its own Resolutions or risk becoming irrelevant. I believe the UN today has met the challenge posed by Iraq and robustly defended its own authority.
The UK has been determined to ensure that the UN emerges from this crisis with its credibility enhanced. Our aim has been to secure consensus on this tough Resolution which leaves Iraq under no illusions about the need for disarmament.
The actual text passed by the Security Council has been the product of 8 weeks of intensive negotiations. First parts of a draft were circulated in the last week of September. Permanent Security Council members have had detailed discussions in this period and consulted the elected 10 members of the Security Council on numerous occasions.
The new Resolution uses the full powers of the UN under chapter 7 of its Charter. The key points: –
ﾷ First the text makes clear in Para 1 that Iraq has been – and remains – in material breach of its obligations under previous Security Council Resolutions;
ﾷ Second – in Para 2 – the text affords Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations;
ﾷ Third it stipulates in Para 4 that false statements or omissions in Iraq’s declaration of its WMD holdings and failure by Iraq to comply with a Resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and provides that this will be reported to the Council for assessment;
ﾷ Paras 5-9 significantly enhance powers of the UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct effective, intrusive inspections. I am not surprised at the level of detail in the Resolution – the UN’s previous experience with Saddam has made this necessary.
Particular aspects here include: –
ﾷ Provision for conducting interviews with Iraqi citizens inside or outside Iraq without Iraqi government minders being present;
ﾷ The explicit setting aside of previous arrangements restricting access to so called presidential sites (and look at page 35 of the UK government’s Joint Intelligence Committee assessment of the Iraqi WMD programme to see the size of the sites they were claiming as presidential palaces);
ﾷ Provisions for freezing a site to be inspected so that nothing is changed within it nor taken from it while it is being inspected;
ﾷ And making legally binding the ‘practical arrangements’ set out by the inspectors themselves and covering issues such as regional bases, the right to encrypted communications and so on.
In sum, my government hopes that this will be a basis for an inspection regime designed not to go through the motions but to achieve real disarmament.
The Resolution sets out the procedure to be followed in the case of Iraq’s failure to comply: –
ﾷ It requires in Para 4 that any further material breach of Iraq’s obligations should be reported to the Council for assessment;
ﾷ Para 11 directs the executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission and the DG of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with their inspection activities or failure to comply with its disarmament obligations;
ﾷ Para 12 provides that the Council will convene immediately upon a receipt of a report of non-compliance in order to consider the situation.
On timing, the Resolution provides that within 7 days of adoption Iraq must confirm its intention fully to comply; submit a full and accurate declaration of all aspects of its WMD programmes within 30 days; that inspections should resume within 45 days and that within 105 days UN MOVIC and the IAEA are to report to the Security Council.
The text concludes by underlining in Para 13 that Iraq has been repeatedly warned that it will face serious consequences as a result of continuous violations of its obligations.
This Resolution meets UK objectives: – it takes into account many points raised in the Security Council by Member States and by the chief inspectors. The UK has always sought unanimous support for this Resolution in order to send the strongest message to Saddam Hussein.
Britain wants a peaceful solution to this crisis and we believe that the US has shown, by its engagement in the long negotiations in the last weeks that it too is committed to using the UN route to resolve this problem. My government believes that the US administration has shown great patience and statesmanship.
People inevitably ask what happens if the above doesn’t work? Well it is not for me to speculate: it will be a matter for the UN. My Ministers have always said that the best chance of a peaceful solution to this crisis us through unanimity of the international community and a clear and credible threat of force if there is not compliance. Today we have unanimity and must be even more optimistic that the process can work – though we must continue to plan for the possibility of military action – which the UK believes should never be used except as a last resort when all other possibilities have been exhausted.
But history tells us too that if diplomacy is to succeed it must be combined with the credible threat of force. THE UN Secretary General recently said, with direct reference to Iraq ‘we have learned that sensitive diplomacy must be backed by the threat of military force if it is to succeed’. It this threat which, in our view, in recent weeks has forced Saddam to concede the prospect of readmitting weapons inspectors – the more credible the threat the more likely it is that Iraq will respond to the demands of the UN.
To sum up: The passing of this Security Council Resolution unanimously by the UNSC has been a critical moment for the whole of the international community and for the integrity of our system of international law.
By adopting this Resolution the Council will now send the clearest possible signal of its determination to uphold the UN’s authority – and we will be one step closer towards resolving a problem which has undermined the security of Iraq’s neighbours, and the wider world, for over a decade.
The task of the inspectors will be to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction. The choice for Saddam Hussein is to comply with the UN or face the serious consequences. My Prime Minister speaking this afternoon in London put it very simply ‘disarm or you face force’.
Let us hope that all concerned will choose the right path now and in the future. We must wish the Inspectors well in their most difficult task – previously obstructed and undertaken under the baleful glare of a most hostile and unfriendly regime. They will need all the help and support they can get. World peace and security depends on it.
BRITISH HIGH COMMISSION
NASSAU
