Remarks to the United Nations Security Council
Secretary Colin L. Powell New York, New York March 7, 2003[video]
(12:00 p.m. EST)
SECRETARY POWELL:
Thank you very much, Mr. President and Mr. Secretary General,
distinguished colleagues. Mr. President, let me join my colleagues in
congratulating you on the assumption of the presidency, and I know you
will lead us in these difficult days with great distinction. And let me
also express to my German colleagues my thanks and admiration for the
stewardship that they provided to the Council over the past month. We
meet today, it seems to me, with one question, and one very, very
important question before us: Has the Iraqi regime made the fundamental
strategic and political decision to comply with the United Nations
Security Council resolutions and to rid itself of all of its weapons of
mass destruction, all of the infrastructure for the development of
weapons of mass destruction? It's a question of intent on the part of
the Iraqi leadership. The
answer to that question does not come from how many inspectors are
present, or how much more time should be given, or how much more effort
should be put into the inspection process. It's not a question of how
many unanswered clusters of questions are there, or are there more
benchmarks that are needed, or are they enough unresolved issues that
have been put forward to be examined and analyzed and conclusions
reached about. The answer depends entirely on whether Iraq has made the
choice to actively cooperate in every possible way, in every possible
manner, in the immediate and complete disarmament of itself of its
prohibited weapons. That's what 1441 called for. I
would like to thank Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei for their reports this
morning which shed more light on this difficult question. I listened to
them very carefully. I listened to them very, very carefully to see if
I was hearing that, finally, Iraq had reached that point where it
understood that the will of the international community must now be
obeyed. I
was pleased to hear from both of these distinguished gentlemen that
there has been some continuing progress on process and even some new
activity with respect to substance. But
I was sorry to learn that all of this still is coming in a grudging
manner, that Iraq is still refusing to offer what was called for by
1441: immediate, active, and unconditional cooperation. Not later,
immediate. Not passive, active. Not conditional, unconditional in every
respect. Unfortunately,
in my judgment, despite some of the progress that has been mentioned, I
still find what I have heard this morning, a catalog still of
non-cooperation. If Iraq genuinely wanted to disarm, we would not have
to be worrying about setting up means of looking for mobile biological
units or any units of that kind. They would be presented to us. We
would not need an extensive program to search for and look for
underground facilities that we know exist. The very fact that we must
make these requests seems to me to show that Iraq is still not
cooperating. The
inspectors should not have to look under every rock, go to every
crossroad, peer into every cave for evidence, for proof. And we must
not allow Iraq to shift the burden of proof onto the inspectors. Nor
can we return to the failed bargain of Resolution 1284, which offered
partial relief for partial disclosure. 1441 requires full and immediate
compliance and we must hold Iraq to its terms. We
also heard this morning of an acceleration of Iraqi initiatives. I
don't know if we should call these things initiatives. Whatever they
are, Iraq's small steps are certainly not initiatives. They are not
something that came forward willingly, freely, from the Iraqis. They
have been pulled out or have been pressed out by the possibility of
military force by the political will of the Secretary Council. They
have been taking these initiatives, if that's what some would choose to
call them, only grudgingly, rarely unconditionally, and primarily under
the threat of force. We
are told that these actions do not constitute immediate cooperation,
but that's exactly what is demanded by 1441. And even then, progress is
often more apparent than real. I am pleased, very pleased, that some
al-Samoud II missiles are now being broken up, although perhaps the
process of breaking them up has now paused for a moment. And
I know these are not toothpicks, but real missiles. But the problem was
we don't know how many missiles there are, how many toothpicks there
are. We don't know whether or not the infrastructure to make more has
been identified and broken up. And we have evidence that shows that the
infrastructure to make more missiles continues to remain within Iraq
and has not yet been identified and destroyed. There
is still much more to do, and, frankly, it will not be possible to do
that which we need to do unless we get the full and immediate kind of
cooperation that 1441 and all previous resolutions demanded. The
intent of the Iraqi regime to keep from turning over all of its weapons
of mass destruction seems to me has not changed, and not to cooperate
with the international community in the manner intended by 1441. If
Iraq had made that strategic decision to disarm, cooperation would be
voluntary, even enthusiastic -- not coerced, not pressured. And that is
the lesson we learned from South Africa and the Ukraine, where
officials did everything possible to ensure complete cooperation with
inspectors. I
also listened to Dr. ElBaradei's report with great interest. As we all
know, in 1991, the IAEA was just days away from determining that Iraq
did not have a nuclear program. We soon found out otherwise. IAEA is
now reaching a similar conclusion, but we have to be very cautious. We
have to make sure that we do keep the books open, as Dr. ElBaradei said
he would. There is dispute about some of these issues and about some of
these specific items. Dr.
ElBaradei talked about the aluminum tubes that Iraq has tried to
acquire over the years. But we also know that notwithstanding the
report today, that there is new information that is available to us,
and I believe available to the IAEA, about a European country where
Iraq was found shopping for these kinds of tubes. And that country has
provided information to us, to IAEA, that the material properties and
manufacturing tolerances required by Iraq are more exact, by a factor
of 50 percent or more, than those usually specified for rocket motor
casings. Its experts concluded that the tolerances and specifications
Iraq was seeking cannot be justified for unguided rockets. And I am
very pleased that we will keep this issue open. I
also welcome the compilation of outstanding issues that Dr. Blix and
his staff have provided to some of us and will make available to all of
us. UNMOVIC put together a solid piece of research that adds up, when
one reads the entire 167 pages, adds up fact by chilling fact, to a
damning record of 12 years of lies, deception and failure to come clean
on the part of Iraq. This
document is, in fact, a catalog of 12 years of abject failure, not by
the inspectors, but by Iraq. We have looked carefully at the draft
given to the UNMOVIC commissioners and which will be available more
widely after this meeting, and we have found nearly 30 instances where
Iraq refused to provide credible evidence substantiating its claims. We
have counted 17 examples when the previous inspectors actually
uncovered evidence contradicting Iraqi claims. We see instance after
instance of Iraq lying to the previous inspectors and planting false
evidence, activities which we believe are still ongoing. As
you read this document, you can see page after page of how Iraq has
obstructed the inspectors at nearly every turn over the years. Just by
way of example, we've talked about the R-400 bombs. The report says
that during the period 1992, Iraq changed its declaration on the
quantity of bombs it had produced, changed the declaration several
times. In 1992, it declared it had produced a total of 1,200 of these
bombs. With the admission, finally, after it was pulled out of them, of
an offensive biological warfare program in 1995, this number was
subsequently changed to a total of 1,550 such bombs. Given the lack of
specific information from Iraq, UNSCOM could not calculate the total
number of R-400 bombs that Iraq had produced for its programs. And
so, this report says it has proved impossible to verify the production
and destruction details of R-400 bombs. UNMOVIC cannot discount the
possibility that some CW- and BW-filled R-400 bombs remain in Iraq. In
this document, UNMOVIC says actions that Iraq could take to help
resolve this question, present any remaining R-400 bombs and all
relevant molds, provide more supporting documentation on production,
inventory relating to the R-400 and R-400A bombs it manufactured,
provide further documentation explaining the coding system that it had
used with the R-400 type bombs, including coding assigned to specific
CBW agents, provide credible evidence that the R-400 bomb production
line stopped after September 1990. This
is just one example of the kinds of documentation we'll all be seeing.
The question that leaps out at you is that these are issues, these
actions that Iraq is being asked to take, they could have taken many
times over the preceding 12 years. We're not talking about immediately.
We're talking about why hasn't it been done over the last 12 years, and
how can we rely on assurances now in the presence of this solid record
of lying and deceit over the years? These
questions could easily have been cleared up in Iraq's December 7th
declaration. There should not be these kinds of outstanding issues to
work on, but there are, and we will all examine them carefully. The
point is that this document conclusively shows that Iraq had and still
has the capability to manufacture these kinds of weapons, that Iraq had
and still has the capability to manufacture not only chemical but
biological weapons, and that Iraq had and still has literally tens of
thousands of delivery systems, including increasingly capable and
dangerous unmanned aerial vehicles. These
are not new questions being presented for our consideration. These are
old questions that have not been resolved and could have been resolved
in December with a declaration, or could have been fully resolved over
the last four months if Iraq had come forward and do what 1441 wanted
it to do. In
his report this morning, Dr. Blix remarked on the paucity of
information on Iraq's programs since 1998. We've all been working hard
to fill that gap. But Iraq is the one who could fill that gap, if it
was truly complying with 1441. It would be inundating the inspectors
with new information, not holding it back begrudgingly. The
draft we reviewed today in preparation for this meeting was 167 pages
long. If Iraq were genuinely committed to disarmament, Dr. Blix's
document would not be 167 pages of issues and questions; it would be
thousands upon thousands of pages of answers about anthrax, about VX,
about sarin, about unmanned aerial vehicles. It would set out in detail
all of Iraq's prohibited programs. Then, and only then, could the
inspectors really do the credible job they need to do of verification,
destruction and monitoring. We've
been down this road before. In March 1998, Saddam Hussein was also
faced with the threat of military action. He responded with promises.
Promises to provide inspectors at that time with immediate,
unconditional and unrestricted access. The then-chief inspector
reported to this Council a new spirit of cooperation, along with his
hope that the inspectors could move very quickly to verify Iraq's
disarmament. We
know what happened to that hope . There was no progress on disarmament,
and nine months later the inspectors found it necessary to withdraw. I
regret that not much has changed. Iraq's current behavior, like the
behavior chronicled in Dr. Blix's document, reveals its strategic
decision to continue to delay, to deceive, to try to throw us off the
trail, to make it more difficult to hope that the will of the
international community will be fractured, that we will go off in
different directions, that we will get bored with the task, that we
will remove the pressure, we will remove the force. And we know what
has happened when that has been done in the past. We
know that the Iraqis still are not volunteering information and, when
they do, what they are giving is often partial and misleading. We know
that when confronted with facts, the Iraqis still are changing their
story to explain those facts -- but not enough to give us the truth. So
has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of
mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? My judgment, I think our
judgment, has to be clearly not. And this is now the reality we, the
Council, must deal with. Security
Council membership carries heavy responsibility, responsibility of the
community of nations to take the hard decisions on tough issues such as
the one we are facing today. Last
November, this Council stepped up to its responsibilities. We must not
walk away. We must not find ourselves here this coming November with
the pressure removed and with Iraq once again marching down the merry
path to weapons of mass destruction, threatening the region,
threatening the world. If
we fail to meet our responsibilities, the credibility of this Council
and its ability to deal with all the critical challenges we face will
suffer. As we sit here, let us not forget the horror still going on in
Iraq, with a spare moment to remember the suffering Iraqi people whose
treasure is spent on these kinds of programs and not for their own
benefit; people who are being beaten, brutalized and robbed by Saddam
and his regime. Colleagues,
now is the time for the Council to send a clear message to Saddam that
we have not been taken in by his transparent tactics. Nobody wants war,
but it is clear that the limited progress we have seen, the process
changes we have seen, the slight, substantive changes we have seen,
come from the presence of a large military force -- nations who are
willing to put their young men and women in harm's way in order to rid
the world of these dangerous weapons. It
doesn't come simply from resolutions. It doesn't come simply from
inspectors. It comes from the will of this Council, the unified
political will of this Council and the willingness to use force, if it
comes to that, to make sure that we achieve the disarmament of Iraq. Now
is the time for the Council to tell Saddam Hussein that the clock has
not been stopped by his stratagems and his machinations. We believe
that the resolution that has been put forward for action by this
Council is appropriate and, in the very near future, we should bring it
before this Council for a vote. The clock continues to tick and the consequences of Saddam Hussein's continued refusal to disarm will be very, very real.
Thank you.
[End] Released on March 7, 2003
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