| | SEC. POWELL: Thank you very much,
Mr. President. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, distinguished members of
the council, it's a great pleasure to be here with you again to
consider this
very important matter.
And I'm very pleased to be here as the secretary
of State of a relatively new country on the face of the Earth, but I think I take
some credit sitting here as being the representative of the oldest democracy that
is assembled here around this table. I'm proud of that, a democracy that believes
in peace, a nation that has tried in the course of its history to show how people
can live in peace with one another, but a democracy that has not been afraid to
meet its responsibilities on the world stage when it has been challenged -- more
importantly, when others in the world have been challenged or when the international
order has been challenged or when the international institutions of which we are
a part have been
challenged.
That's why we have joined and been active
members of institutions such as the United Nations and a number of other institutions
that have come together for the purpose of peace and for the purpose of mutual
security and for the purpose of letting other nations which pursue a path of destruction
with -- which pursue paths of developing weapons of mass destruction, which threaten
their neighbors -- to let them know that we will stand tall, we will stand together
to meet
these kinds of challenges.
I want to express my appreciation
to Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei for their presentation this morning. They took up
a difficult challenge when they went back into Iraq last fall in pursuit of disarmament,
as required by Resolution 1441.
And I listened very attentively to all
they said this morning,
and I am pleased that there have been improvements
with respect to process. I'm pleased that there have been improvements with respect
to not having five minders with each inspectors, down to something less than five
minders with each inspector. But I think they still are being minded, they're
still being watched, they're still being bugged, they still do not have the freedom
of access around Iraq that they need to do their job well.
I'm pleased
that a few people have come forward for interviews, but not all the people who
should be coming forward for interviews, and with the freedom to interview them
in a manner that their safety can be protected and the safety of their families
can be protected, as required by U.N. Resolution 1441.
I am glad that
access has been relatively good. But that is all
process. It is not substance.
I am pleased to hear that decrees have now been issued that
should have
been issued years and years ago. But does anybody really think a decree from Saddam
Hussein -- directed to whom? -- is going to fundamentally change the situation?
And it comes out on a morning when we are moving forward, down the path laid out
by Resolution 1441.
These are all process issues. These are all tricks that
are being played on us.
And to say that new commissions are being formed
that will go find materials that they claim are not there in the first place --
can anybody honestly believe that either one of these two new commissions will
actively seek out information that they have been actively trying to deny to the
world community, to the inspectors, for the last 11-plus years?
I commend
the inspectors. I thank them for what they are doing. But at the same time, I
have to keep coming back to the point that the inspectors have repeatedly made,
and they've made it again here this morning. They've been making it for the last
11-plus years. What we need is not more inspections. What we need is not more
immediate access. What we need is immediate, active, unconditional, full cooperation
on the part of Iraq. What we need is for Iraq to disarm.
Resolution 1441
was not about inspections. Let me say that
again. Resolution 1441 was not
about inspections. Resolution 1441 was about the disarmament of Iraq. We worked
on that resolution for seven weeks, from the time of President Bush's powerful
speech here at the United Nations General Assembly on the 12th of September until
the resolution was passed on the 8th of November. We had intense discussions.
All of you are familiar with it; you participated in these discussions. And it
was about disarmament.
And the resolution began with the clear statement
that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations for the past 11 years and
remains to that day, the day the resolution was passed, in material breach. And
the resolution said Iraq must now come into compliance, it must disarm.
The resolution went on to say that we want to see a declaration from Iraq, within
30 days, of all of its activities -- put it all on the table, let's see what you
have been doing, give us a declaration that we can believe and that is full, complete
and accurate. That's what we said to Iraq on the 8th of November. And some 29
days later, we got 12,000 pages. Nobody in this council can say that that was
a full, complete or accurate declaration.
And now it is several months
after that declaration was
submitted, and I have heard nothing to suggest
that they have filled in the gaps that were in that declaration, or they have
added new evidence that should give us any comfort that we have a full, complete
and accurate declaration. You will recall we put that declaration requirement
into the resolution as an early test of Iraq's seriousness: Are they serious?
Are they going to disarm? Are they going to comply? Are they going to cooperate?
And the answer with that declaration was no; we're going to see what we can get
away with; we can see how much we can slip under your nose, and everybody will
clap and say isn't that wonderful, they provided a declaration that was of not
any particular use.
We then had some level of acceptance of the fact
that inspectors were going back in. Recall that Iraq tried to use this gambit
right after the president's speech in September to try to keep Resolution 1441
from ever coming down the pike. Suddenly, and the following Monday after the president's
speech, "Oh, we'll let inspectors back in." Why? Because when
the president spoke and when Iraq saw that
the international community was
now coming together with seriousness and with determination, it knew it better
do something. It didn't do it out of the goodness of its heart or it suddenly
discovered that it's been in violation all those years. They did it because
of pressure. They did it because this council stood firm. They did it because
the international community said enough; we will not tolerate Iraq continuing
to have weapons of mass destruction to be used against
its own people, to
be used against its neighbors, or worse, if we find a post-9/11 nexus between
Iraq and terrorist organizations that are looking for just such weapons.
And I would submit, and will provide more evidence, that such connections
are now emerging and we can establish that they exist. We cannot wait for one
of these terrible weapons to show up in one of our cities and wonder where it
came from, after it's been detonated by al-Qaida or somebody else. This is the
time to go after this source of this kind of weaponry.
And that's what
1441 was all about. And to this day, we have not seen the level of cooperation
that was expected, anticipated, hoped for -- I hoped for it. No one worked harder
than the United States, and I submit to you no one worked harder, if I may humbly
say, I did to try to put forward a resolution that would show the determination
of the international community to the leadership in Iraq so that they would now
meet their obligations and come clean and comply, and they did not.
Notwithstanding
all of the discussion we have heard so far this morning about "Give inspections
more time," "Let's have more airplanes flying over," "Let's
have more inspectors added to the inspection process," Dr. Blix noted earlier
week that it's not more inspectors that are needed; what's needed is what both
Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei have said, what's been needed since 1991 — immediate,
active, unconditional compliance and cooperation.
I'm pleased that Iraq
is now discussing this matter with South
Africa. But it isn't brain surgery!
South Africa knows how to do it; anybody knows how to do it! If we were getting
the kind of cooperation that we expected when 1441 was passed, and we hoped for
when 1441 was passed, these documents would be flooding out of homes, flooding
out of factories. There would be no question about access. There would be no question
about interviews. If Iraq was serious in this matter, interviewees would
be standing up outside of UNMOVIC and IAEA offices in Baghdad and elsewhere, waiting
to be interviewed because they are determined to prove to the world, to give the
world all the evidence needed that these weapons of mass destruction are gone.
But the questions, not withstanding all of the lovely rhetoric,
the questions remain. And some of my colleagues have talked about them. We haven't
accounted for the anthrax. We haven't accounted for the botulinum, VX, both biological
agents, growth media, 30,000 chemical and biological munitions. These are not
trivial matters one can just ignore and walk away from and say, "Well, maybe
the inspectors will find them; maybe they won't." We have not had a complete,
accurate declaration. We have seen the reconstitution of casting chambers for
missiles. Why? Because they are still trying to develop these weapons.
We have not seen the kind of cooperation that was anticipated, expected and demanded
of this body, and we must continue to demand it. We must continue to put pressure
on Iraq, put force upon Iraq to make sure that the threat of force is not removed.
Because 1441 was all about compliance, not inspections. The inspections were put
in as a
way, of course, to assist Iraq in coming forward and complying, in
order to verify, in order to monitor, as the chief inspector noted. But we still
have got an incomplete answer from Iraq.
We are facing a difficult situation.
More inspectors — sorry;
it's not the answer. What we need is immediate
cooperation. Time — how much time does it take to say, "I understand
the will of the international community and I and my regime are laying it all
out for you," and not playing "guess," not forming commissions,
not issuing decrees, not getting laws that should have been passed years ago suddenly
passed on the day when we are meeting?
These are not responsible actions
on the part of Iraq; these are continued efforts to deceive, to deny, to divert,
to throw us off the trail, to throw us off the path.
The resolution
anticipated this kind of response from Iraq. And that's why, in all of our discussions
about that resolution, we said, they're in material breach, if they come into
new material breach with a false declaration or not a willingness to cooperate
and comply, as OP-4 says, then the matter has to be referred to the council for
serious consequences.
I submit to you that, notwithstanding the improvements
in process that we have noted, and I welcome, and I thank the inspectors for their
hard work, these improvements in process do not move us away from the central
problem that we continue to have. And more inspections and a longer inspection
period will not move us away from the central issue, the central problem we are
facing, and that central
problem is that Iraq has failed to comply with 1441.
The threat of force must remain.
Force should always be a last resort;
I have preached this for
most of my professional life as a soldier and as
a diplomat; but it must be a resort. We cannot allow this process to be endlessly
strung out, as Iraq is trying to do right now, "string it out long enough
and the world will start looking in other directions; the Security Council will
move on; we'll get away with it again." My friends, they cannot be allowed
to get away with it again.
We now are in a situation where Iraq's continued
noncompliance and failure to cooperate, it seems to me in the clearest terms,
requires this council to begin to think through the consequences of walking away
from this problem, with the reality that we have to face this problem, and that
in the very near future we will have to consider whether or not we've reached
that point where this council, as distasteful as it may be, as reluctant as we
may be, as many...as
so many of you would rather not have to face this issue,
but it's an issue that must be faced, and that is, whether or not it is time to
consider serious consequences of the kind intended by 1441.
The reason
we must not look away from it is because these are terrible weapons. We are talking
about weapons that will kill not a few people, not a hundred people, not a thousand
people, but could kill tens of thousands of people if these weapons got into the
wrong hands. And the security of the region, the hopes for the people of Iraq
themselves, and our security rest upon us meeting our responsibilities, and, if
it comes to it, invoking the serious consequences called for in 1441. 1441 is
about disarmament and compliance, and not merely a process of inspections that
goes on forever without ever resolving the basic problem.
Thank you. | |
