INTERVIEW WITH IGOR IVANOV
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

September 16, 2002

Foreign Minister Ivanov: An official message has come in addressed to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, reporting the decision of Baghdad to allow international disarmament inspectors into the country without any preliminaries. We hail this decision. Russia had consistently worked for the return to Iraq of international inspectors and now our chief aim consists of their being able, at the earliest possible date, to leave for Iraq and begin their work. It is the inspectors' work that must open the way for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq. We will in the UN Security Council closely follow this work so as to remove any possible concerns about the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. If the international inspectors report that there are no such weapons in Iraq, then this, I repeat, will become grounds for lifting the sanctions on Iraq.

Thus, the policy approved by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin for a political settlement of the situation around Iraq is being implemented in practice. The last few days' events have once again borne out that by acting in this spirit, we can really achieve concrete results. Naturally, complex, big, painstaking work lies ahead, and we will continue to participate actively in Iraqi settlement. But it is crucial that today by joint efforts we have managed to ward off the threat of a military scenario developing around Iraq and to put the settlement process back on a political track. We believe that this is the only right course toward resolving the situation, and Russia will continue to actively participate in this process.

Question: Igor Sergeyevich, what are the prospects for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution in this connection?

Foreign Minister Ivanov: We believe that now taking into account the received message of the Iraqi leadership it is necessary in the next few days to solve all the technical matters related to the return of inspectors and the deployment of their activities. That doesn't require any new resolutions, from our point of view. There exist all the previous resolutions of the Security Council, and they create all the necessary conditions for deployment of the activity of the international inspectors.

Some members of the UN Security Council are expressing the view that a resolution will be required after all, stating the Council's position as to the implementation of all the previously adopted resolutions on Iraq. We believe that this isn't a top-priority task. The top-priority task is for inspectors to resume their activity because it is the problem of weapons of mass destruction that causes the special concern of certain countries and in order to remove this concern, the findings of the inspectors are necessary. Therefore, we will now concentrate our efforts in this direction. Most UN member states support our point of view that this is the direction in which work has to be carried out at present. There exist other questions relating to Iraqi settlement, also arising from the UN Security Council resolutions. They must be tackled through the dialogue between Iraq and the UN. Here we also naturally consider it necessary to continue efforts. But the central question is everything related to weapons of mass destruction. And so the return of inspectors is the key task, which we have always put on the front burner and which must now be solved.