Iraq With The U.N. Inspectors example essay topic

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United Nation's chief weapons inspector briefed the Security Council Tuesday, saying his inspectors would return to Iraq to resume looking for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction if that was what the council wanted. But at the same time, the White House was saying the U.S. -led coalition had taken over the job. The French ambassador to the United Nations presented a third view, saying some way should be found to coordinate the efforts of coalition inspection teams now working in Iraq with the U.N. inspectors. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States wanted to work with the United Nations, but he offered no official role for Hans Blix and his inspection teams. 'The coalition is taking on responsibility for the dismantling of Iraq's WMD and missile programs, which is part of the international community's shared goal, which is laid out by the Security Council -- a cause with which we agree,' Fleischer told reporters. Later, Fleischer was more conciliatory, saying: 'Hans Blix had a difficult job to do and he did his level best to do it.

The blame lies with Saddam Hussein. ' Going into his closed-door session with the Security Council, Blix said, 'I will talk about the readiness of UNMOVIC to go back to Iraq but also about the need for some signals and adjustments of the basis for our work there by the council. We are serving the council, as you know. ' After the session, Blix said his sense was that the Security Council is groping for some way forward in which efforts by the U.S. -led coalition can be combined with U.N. efforts. On his way out of the session, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the French ambassador, said: 'I proposed that the decision (be) taken to immediately suspend the civilian sanctions.

'I also propose that there should be some work to find practical pragmatic arrangement which in our view is necessary to coordinate and combine the work of the American teams on the ground and the work of UNMOVIC and IAEA so that Iraqi disarmament could be initially verified. So I think it's a preliminary exchange of views and we " ll have more meetings on this question. ' In an interview with BBC radio aired just prior to the session, Blix took a swipe at the intelligence reports the United States and other nations offered prior to the war on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, calling them 'shaky. ' 'I think it's been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been shaky,' he said. In addition, he said U.S. charges that his team suppressed information on an Iraqi drone airplane and a cluster bomb in his pre-war report were an apparent attempt to discredit his inspectors.

'At the time the U.S. was very eager to sway the votes of the Security Council and they felt that stories about these things would be useful to have and they let it out,' Blix said. 'Thereby they tried to hurt us a bit and say we'd suppressed this. ' Later, asked about the intelligence reports, he said: 'That there were shortcomings is clear. ' The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, has continued to keep inspectors under contract.

UNMOVIC was responsible for looking for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, while the International Atomic Energy Agency looked for evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Blix said U.N. resolutions regarding Iraq remain in place and envision a role for the inspectors, who he said have credibility. 'The resolutions foresee that the U.N. international inspectors will have access to all sites in Iraq, and they will have access to people. We are not an auditing firm,' he said. 'We may not be the only ones in the world who have credibility, but I think we do have credibility for being objective and independent. ' Asked how UN inspectors might work with coalition teams looking for Iraq's weapons, Blix said there was 'no adversarial relationship' between the United Nations and the coalition.