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| CONTINUING TENSIONS | |
 December 28, 1998 
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No way out. |
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ambassador Ekeus, we've just described a series of moves that have taken place since the bombing. What's your interpretation of these events?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what do you think, Mr. Ambassador, that Iraq wants the Security Council to do? AMBASSADOR ROLF EKEUS: Well, Iraq would like to have an assurance that the sanctions will be lifted. If Iraq gets that assurance, it will admit the U.N. weapons inspectors in, but they need the assurance first. That, of course, is the problem. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Khalilzad, what do you - how do you interpret these most recent events?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You're talking about the bombing? ZALMAY KHALILZAD: Exactly. And also the opposition to the attacks in the Arab world is seeking to exploit that opening by putting everything on the table, if you like, and seeking to increase further the opposition to U.S. policies in the Gulf and isolating the United States in the United Nations and in the Middle East. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So he's really trying to push it as far as he can here, you think? ZALMAY KHALILZAD: That's right. I think that he knows that with the attacks the damage that was done to his capabilities was probably quite limited and that it will become harder for the U.S., given the opposition in the U.N. and in the Arab world, to attack again, so he sees an opening, an opportunity to push for some significant changes of the kind that Ambassador Ekeus talked about. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Halliday, do you agree with that? You were there until October. How do you see these most recent events?
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ambassador Ekeus, is the inspection sanctions regime that we have known over the past years essentially ended now? Is it over because of the bombing?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you think, Mr. Ambassador, there is a possibility of still getting the UNSCOM inspectors back in and proceeding? AMBASSADOR ROLF EKEUS: I think so. It is - of course, a third point is necessary - that is that the U.N. Security Council and especially the five permanent members put their act together and tried to find a common policy. I think all of them are in agreement that Iraq should have no weapons, but there are disagreements how the sanctions should be dealt with, and that, I think, is a cause for some high powered diplomacy here, which could help to clear the situation. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Khalilzad, how do you see the current state of the sanctions inspections regime?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So, Mr. Khalilzad, you - even if it were possible to get the UNSCOM inspectors back into Iraq, you're saying their effectiveness is over and so some other policy has to be pursued? ZALMAY KHALILZAD: Exactly. We've had inspectors in Iraq over the past several years, but we have not had full Iraqi cooperations all the time, and it does appear that Iraq is unwilling to fully cooperate with UNSCOM. That cooperation requires that Iraq come clean on its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and Saddam Hussein appears unprepared to do that. So I think if we and the international community want an Iraq that's free of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, we need a new government in Iraq that can live at peace with the Iraqis and with the neighborhood and abandon its plans and capabilities in the area of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. |
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DENIS HALLIDAY: Well, I believe the Security Council has got to give more recognition to the cooperation that Iraq has had with UNSCOM for now on seven or eight years. A lot of progress was made in the early years under Ambassador Ekeus, and we were very close, I understood, to closing the files on nuclear weapons and on missiles. This, unfortunately, now has taken a new political twist. There are add-ons to the resolution calling for toppling of the president, Saddam Hussein, himself, and so on, which certainly I would say undermines the sincerity of any cooperative effort between the United Nations Security Council and the president of Iraq. In terms of sanctions, I find that there is no justification for continuing a program which knowingly is killing thousands of Iraqis, particularly young children, every month, and is sustaining malnutrition levels at over 30 percent. I don't believe the price that is being paid can be justified by anybody. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what is the current status at the U.N. food for - the oil for food policy?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, you heard what Mr. Khalilzad said about what he thinks should happen now. Do you think Iraq needs to be contained, and, if so, how would you go about it? DENIS HALLIDAY: No. I don't believe in this isolation and containment program. It leads to alienation. It identifies Iraq alone as a problem. There's a Resolution 687, which calls for the disarmament of the entire region for downgrading military capacity in the entire Middle East. That has been neglected by the Security Council. The focus is entirely on Iraq. I think we have to look at Iraq as part of the neighborhood of Arab states. We have to identify or they have to identify perhaps what are all the core issues that create the tension and mistrust amongst the Arab countries and try to address those issues because in the long run they need each other. As the oil revenues decline in the years ahead, there's a need for some sort of community of nations that can invest and support each other in sustainable development, other positive activities in the years ahead, and I think we should encourage that here and meantime lift the sanctions, take the risk, allow Iraq to rebuild its economy, rebuild, rehabilitate its power needs, its water and sanitation systems, which are so fundamental. |
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Ambassador Ekeus, what about that as a way out?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Khalilzad, what's your response to Denis Halliday's proposal?
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. ZALMAY KHALILZAD: As far as on the sanctions, let me say one word - that the Iraqis have had the worst of both worlds - sanctions and Saddam Hussein. And the way out is not only to relieve their sufferings in terms of food, but also their suffering in terms of their political life, and that means to help them have a regime and that they can participate in that will be different than what they have now. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, all right. Thank you very much, all three of you. |
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ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Today's exchange of missiles above Iraq was the sharpest
face-off since the end of the 70-hour bombing campaign December 19th.
Since then, the government in Baghdad has announced a ban on international
flights over its territory, including military aircraft enforcing Northern
and Southern no-fly zones and planes flying U.N. personnel; barred the
return of U.N. weapons inspectors unless economic sanctions are lifted;
and threatened to pull out of the U.N.'s oil for food program, which allows
Iraq to sell $5.2 billion worth of oil every six months in exchange
for supervised distribution of food and medicine. 
We
get three views now on these latest developments: Rolf Ekeus was executive
chairman of UNSCOM, the U.N. inspection mission in Iraq from 1991 to 1997-he's
now Sweden's ambassador to the United States; Denis Halliday was the
U.N. humanitarian coordinator of the oil for food program from September
1997 until October. And Zalmay Khalilzad was a Pentagon official in
the Bush administration and is now director of the Strategy & Doctrine
program at Rand, a research institution. 
AMBASSADOR
ROLF EKEUS: Well, my interpretation is that the Iraq leadership is -
has sense that there is no way out; they are now in the waiting mode.
They tried to develop a situation where they would like to see the other
side move, the Security Council to move and do something in response
to them. They have decided to take a stonewalling position, it looks
like, and I think that something has to be done in response to this.
ZALMAY
KHALILZAD: I think that the attacks that took place have emboldened
Saddam Hussein because of the opposition to the attack at the United
Nations Security Council on the part of China, Russia, and to some extent
France. 
DENIS
HALLIDAY: Well, I don't think we should be surprised by what's happened.
I think after the military strikes when Iraq was shown to be very weak
and incapable of any sort of response, this was a natural flow from
that, and so as a result of political pressure within Iraq to show that
Iraq is alive and well and able to respond to what it perceives to be
more intrusive activity, and furthermore, for many months there's been
an Iraqi position that breaking with the United Nations is what is necessary,
that they need to go it alone, they need to show that Iraq is a country
with national sovereignty and dignity intact, and to find a way to resolve
its problems without further contact with the United Nations. 
AMBASSADOR
ROLF EKEUS: No, I don't think so. As I said, I think it's holding time.
The only way Iraq can get rid of the sanctions is by accommodating the
inspectors, allow them to come back and allow them to do their work,
and of course, to give up what remains of his weapons holdings, so that
looks in the sense hopeless if I don't change tack, but I think one
could help Iraqis somewhat to make clear that there are certain fundamentals,
and I think necessarily they indicated that it should be clear to Iraq
that Iraq's integrity and existence as a state should be preserved,
that one should be clear that if Iraq does the right thing according
to the resolution, it should be a relief of sanctions. 
ZALMAY
KHALILZAD: I think the case of the inspections over the past several
years shows that while it was rather effective at the beginning, it
has not been very effective in terms of destroying all of Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction and its long-range missile program. It appears that
Saddam Hussein values these systems more than he does the relief of
sanctions. So I think the solution is not really to go back to a watered-down
or weaker version of what we had before the recent crisis, which was
weakened already, but rather to come to a recognition that as long as
Saddam Hussein is in power, Iraq is likely to come clean with regard
to its weapons of mass destruction and missiles and to achieve that
end, there is a need for a new government in Iraq that does not pursue
the objectives of possessing weapons of mass destruction and missiles.
Without that, we are likely to face the kind of situation that we have
been facing for sometime now. 
ELIZABETH
FARNSWORTH: Mr. Halliday, what's your opinion about that? And then I
want to ask you some more about how you think the current regime is
at the moment, the regime of sanctions and inspections. 
DENIS
HALLIDAY: As I understand it, the team has gone back into Baghdad with
presumably the agreement of the Iraqi authorities and will continue
on the current program, which I think runs out in April. And, you know,
there is a trend and there has been for some time to go it alone. We
may see that Iraqis will decide they'll manage without oil for food,
but I worry about that because the program has made a difference. It
has brought in more than 8 million metric tons of foodstuffs and medicines.
There would be a huge hole unless Iraq has some device, some capacity
to sustain this sort of assistance for about 23 million people. 
AMBASSADOR
ROLF EKEUS: Well, I think it's clear that - Denis was saying - that
the situation is difficult. But thanks to the program, the immediate
concerns about starvation, about also health is alleviated somewhat,
so I think one should expand - that's my personal view - that one could
expand further by allowing the Iraqi economy to come back on track.
Now it is just receiving but it has not managed to get the production
activities going. It should be possible with ongoing weapons monitoring,
with an oil sense, which one could broaden the sets of items which could
be imported, to give more than food and medicine, because the problem
with the release of sanctions now is that that would give the same amount
of money into the hand of the leadership, of the president, Saddam Hussein,
and he has used - when he had this oil money - what did he use it for
- he didn't use it for his people - he used it for one of the most dramatic
expansions of weapons of mass destruction. He carried out the war for
eight years with Iran. And the - that undercut and destroyed almost
systematically the Iraq economy. We have to recall that. I'm not quite
sure it would be better if I give the money back to him, and that is
the problem with Denis Halliday's proposal.