On Iraqi Cooperation with UNMOVIC and IAEA

RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

February 28, 2003

On February 27 Iraq informed UNMOVIC of readiness to start fulfilling its demand to destroy the Al-Samoud-2 missiles. It also sent to UNMOVIC new materials with replies and explanations on a whole number of outstanding disarmament questions. They shed light on many of the problems on which the international inspectors and the members of the United Nations Security Council have complaints against Baghdad. This concerns, in particular, R-400 aviation bombs, anthrax pathogens, VX gas, mustard gas shells, and so on. These materials are called upon to help advance substantially towards removal of the "blank spots" in the disarmament dossiers.

It is of fundamental importance that the transfer of that information represents not an isolated episode, but one more step in the implementation of a whole series of measures for building up Baghdad's cooperation with UNMOVIC and IAEA. In the last few weeks alone the Iraqi authorities have passed a national law banning the production of WMDs, created two national commissions for the search of unaccounted weapons and documents, whose work has already produced the first results, handed over to UNMOVIC dozens of new documents supplementing the Iraqi declaration of previous WMD programs of December 7, 2002, and carried out excavations that made it possible to confirm the unilateral destruction of a significant quantity of R-400 aviation bombs. And this is a far from complete list of steps undertaken by Iraq on its own initiative that evidence its shift to active cooperation on the questions of substance, as is demanded by the resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Another confirmation of Baghdad's disposition to unconditionally fulfill its obligations is that in the present not easy situation it has given consent to the resumption of aerial monitoring with the employment of, among others, the American U-2 spy plane.

In the light of this there are no grounds to say that Iraq has lost one last chance to disarm. On the contrary, the facts show that this chance is being realized.

On the whole from the results of the first three months of inspections it can be stated that Resolution 1441 is working and is yielding tangible results. In execution of the mandates of UNMOVIC and IAEA no small progress has been achieved confirming the productiveness of the efforts which are being undertaken by Russia, other member countries of the UN Security Council and the international inspectors.

Under these conditions, in Russia's conviction, it is necessary to continue and intensify the inspection process, as well as to compile a list of key disarmament tasks with a clear enumeration of the steps which Iraq has to take for their closure. This approach, suggested in the Russian-French-German memorandum of February 24, is opening up a real way towards a peaceful settlement of the crisis on the basis of the full implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions.