Iraq: U.N. Inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction

Congressional research reportOct 7, 2003

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Order Code RL31671

CRS Report for Congress

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Iraq: U.N. Inspections for

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Updated October 7, 2003

Sharon A. Squassoni

Specialist in National Defense

Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

Iraq: U.N. Inspections for

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Summary

From late November 2002 to March 2003, U.N. inspectors combed Iraq looking

for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Under the threat of war from the United

States and a unanimous Security Council resolution (1441), Iraq was granted a final

opportunity to disarm. Many had low expectations for successful inspections. After

16 weeks, inspectors turned up some evidence of undeclared activities, but not

enough to convince a majority of the Security Council members that military force

was necessary. Nonetheless, on March 19, 2003, U.S. and British forces attacked

Iraq to forcibly eliminate its WMD. This report, which will be updated as events

warrant, analyzes the inspections, their outcome, and possible future tasks.

The U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)

and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted over 750 inspections

at 550 sites. These inspections seemed to benefit from strengthened authorities under

the new U.N. resolution, new technologies, a better relationship between UNMOVIC

and the IAEA, and pressure from the threat of military strikes. Nonetheless, most

observers agree that Iraqi compliance was superficial and oriented to facilitating the

process of inspections, rather than on providing cooperation in substantive matters.

In addition, new practical, technical, and political challenges arose. There were

allegations that not all actionable intelligence was shared with inspectors and that the

threat of war increased pressure on inspectors to produce some definitive knowledge

and helped politicize their investigations. Many alleged that Iraq might have hidden

weapons activities in dual-use facilities over the last four years, thus complicating

inspections. Ultimately, judging Iraq’s compliance may have relied less on

thresholds of evidence, than on assumptions about the effectiveness and utility of

inspections at that point in time.

UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Blix and IAEA Director General ElBaradei

reported five times to the U.N. Security Council between December 19, 2002 and

March 7, 2003. Secretary of State Colin Powell additionally briefed the Security

Council on Iraq’s efforts to evade disarmament. Security Council members seem to

agree that Iraq failed to cooperate fully, particularly in the substance of disarmament,

but ultimately they disagreed on whether inspections should continue or whether war

was necessary to disarm Iraq. On the eve of war, inspectors withdrew from Iraq.

The future of inspections in Iraq is uncertain. The United States has not sought

U.N. assistance to help verify WMD evidence U.S. forces might uncover during the

war, despite U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan expectation that inspectors would

return to Iraq after the war. Hans Blix fulfilled his UNMOVIC contract in June 2003

and his deputy, Demetrius Perricos, is acting executive chairman.

Relevant congressional legislation includes resolutions related to the inspections

and authorization for war (S.Res. 28, S.Res. 32, H.Res. 55, H.Con.Res. 2, H.J.Res.

20) and S. 205, Iraqi Scientists Immigration Act of 2003, which would provide visas

for scientists involved in the WMD program. See also RL31715, Iraq War:

Background and Issues Overview.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A New Inspection Regime: Resolution 1441 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Protocols for Inspections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Timeline for Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Challenges of Inspections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Opportunities of Inspections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Milestones in the Inspection Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Evaluating Iraq’s December 7 Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

January 27 Report to U.N.Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

February 5 Powell Briefing to U.N.Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

February 14 Report to U.N.Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

March 7 Report to U.N.Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

“Clusters Document” & Key Disarmament Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

U.S. Assistance to Inspections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Congressional Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Iraq: U.N. Inspections for

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Introduction

On November 8, 2002, the United Nations Security Council gave Iraq “a final

opportunity to comply with disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the

Council” with the adoption of Resolution 1441. Iraq formally accepted the

resolution and inspectors began their work in Iraq on November 27. On December

7, Iraq provided a 12,000-page declaration of its WMD programs and capabilities,

which largely recycled old declarations and maintained that Iraq has no weapons of

mass destruction (WMD). On December 19th, the International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission

(UNMOVIC),1 the two organizations charged with inspecting Iraq, reported that the

declaration was incomplete. UNMOVIC and the IAEA told the U.N. Security

Council that Baghdad “missed an opportunity” to come clean about its arms

programs.

Between November 2002 and mid-March 2003, UNMOVIC and IAEA

inspectors conducted 750 inspections at 550 sites. They conducted unannounced

inspections, interviewed Iraqi personnel, taken samples, and collected documents.

Although Iraq initially objected to reconnaissance flights (by U-2, Mirage 4 and

Russian Antonov aircraft) and reportedly actively discouraged scientists from being

interviewed in private, by mid-February Iraq acquiesced to these rights of the

inspectorate. Both UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director

General Mohamed ElBaradei generally characterized Iraqi cooperation as good on

process and lacking on substance.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 states that “the Council has repeatedly

warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued

violations of its obligations” (emphasis added). Although four years had lapsed in

inspections since 1998, President Bush’s September 12, 2002 speech to the United

Nations and Congress’ authorization of the use of force against Iraq (P.L. 107-243)

in October 2002 lent urgency to the inspections.2 In retrospect, a key question is:

What purpose did inspections serve? Were they a trip-wire for military action to

disarm Saddam Hussein, or were they part of an ongoing inspection and disarmament

process that will continue at some point in the future?

See UNMOVIC’s and IAEA’s web sites:

[http://www.unmovic.org] and [http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/IaeaIraq/]

See [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html] for text of

President Bush’s speech.

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In March 2002, before war against Iraq seemed imminent, National Security

Advisor Condoleeza Rice remarked in an interview that:

We need to be very clear on the purpose of weapons inspections. These are not

inspections for inspections’ sake. They are instrumental to make sure that ... Iraq

is not trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In fact they were supposed

to be the ability to give testimony that there are no such programs. And so when

we focus on weapons inspections in Iraq, we have to focus on weapons

inspections that would be effective enough to be sure that this man is not trying

to do what we know he has tried to do over the last 20 years. Ultimately, the

United States believes that regime change in Iraq is going to be best for the Iraqi

people and for the region. But clearly weapons inspections that are tough,

weapons inspections that cannot be challenged, weapons inspections in which

Saddam Hussein is not trying to soften the edges of them would be a helpful step

forward.3

Few doubt the difficulty of establishing confidence that Iraq is free of weapons

of mass destruction. On the one hand, inspections in Iraq have the logically

impossible task of proving a negative – that Iraq is not trying to acquire WMD. For

those who believe that inspections cannot provide such assurances, obstruction of

those inspections hints at (or to some, proves) the concealment of some WMDrelated activities.4 In this view, even cooperation in the process of inspections

provides few assurances of the absence of WMD programs, and the failure of

inspections to turn up evidence of WMD-related activities would, in this view, not

confer innocence, but illustrate the shortcomings of inspections.

For some observers who are opposed to inspections, a key assumption is that the

task of disarming Iraq is insurmountable without genuine Iraqi cooperation, which

requires the leadership in Iraq to give up its WMD aspirations. The Bush

Administration in January 2003 cited South Africa, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan as

models of cooperative disarmament and contrasted Iraq’s actions with those of the

three models.5 The former deputy executive chairman of UNSCOM (U.N. Special

Commission), Charles Duelfer, compared inspections in Iraq with those conducted

in Germany between World War I and World War II, which were ultimately

Newsmaker Interview with Jim Lehrer, March 11,

[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june02/rice_3-11.html]

2002,

In the same interview, Rice said: “We have a country that continues to flaunt its

international obligations undertaken in 1991 in the armistice, that continues to try to acquire

weapons of mass destruction. After all, there is a reason that Saddam Hussein does not want

weapons inspections in Iraq. It’s…obviously he’s got something to hide.”

[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june02/rice_3-11.html]

“What Does Disarmament Look Like?” The White House, January 23, 2003. See

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/disarmament/]. These examples minimize key

differences in the situations. For one, Ukraine and Kazakhstan inherited nuclear weapons

from the breakup of the Soviet Union and might not ever have had nuclear weapons

ambitions, and second, the South African government, according to many, acted to

dismantle its nuclear weapons when it became clear that regime change was inevitable.

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unsuccessful.6 Duelfer argued that this kind of coercive disarmament by an

international organization is doomed to failure. CIA Director George Tenet remarked

in a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 11,

2003, that “unless he [Saddam Hussein] provides the data to build on, provides the

access, provides the unfettered access that he’s supposed to, provides us with

surveillance capability, there’s little chance you are going to find weapons of mass

destruction under the rubric he’s created inside the country.”7

Other observers point to the knowledge gained from 1991 to 1998 by inspectors

about the extent of Iraq’s WMD programs, even in the face of strong Iraqi resistance

and deception, to the uncertainties of waging war against an opponent that may have

and be inclined to use WMD, and to the value in an approach that has broad

international support. Some questioned the ability of intelligence agencies alone to

detect WMD programs, citing reports of the CIA’s lack of knowledge about Iraq’s

WMD programs prior to 1991 and the evident surprise about the 1998 Indian and

Pakistani nuclear tests.8 In the nonproliferation community, most agree that treaties

and agreements ultimately cannot stop a country that is determined to acquire WMD,

but rather make the process more difficult and costly, thereby buying time for

political change. In the case of Iraq, four years without inspections elapsed with

relatively little public debate, but the tragedies of September 11, 2001 seem to have

convinced many observers that delay in disarming Iraq could increase the threat to

international security. A relatively new concern in the debate on Iraq’s disarmament

is the alleged support Iraq might provide to terrorists. Some observers say there

appears to be little evidence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda, but some posit that Iraq might

have incentives to provide WMD materials or weapons to terrorists, which would call

for quick disarmament of Iraq.

“How Baghdad Divided the Conquerors,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 2000.

Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, Hearing on “Threats to U.S. Security”

before the Senate Select Intelligence committee, February 11, 2003.

“The Big Difference Between Intelligence and Evidence,” Washington Post, February 2,

2003. “US intelligence did not detect Iraq’s nuclear program until it was uncovered after

Desert Storm in 1991. It did not find out about the Iraqi biological weapons program until

1995, with some help from the defection of Hussein Kamel.”

CRS-4

Background9

The inspections conducted in Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War verified Iraq’s

violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons

Convention, and the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of bacteriological or

chemical weapons in warfare. From May 1991 to December 1998, UNSCOM and

the IAEA’s Action Team on Iraq conducted several thousand inspections at over

1,000 facilities. The extent and scale of Iraq’s programs to develop biological

weapons, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons surprised even those

knowledgeable in those areas. IAEA inspections uncovered a Manhattan-Projectlike nuclear weapons program, which employed thousands of scientists and explored

many avenues of producing weapons-grade material. Nonetheless, Iraq had not

produced any real weapons-grade material, although it did have a crash program to

secretly divert highly enriched uranium under IAEA safeguards for a warhead, as

well as a crude weapons design. Inspections also uncovered bulk biological weapons

agent production and a rudimentary delivery capability. Much about Iraq’s biological

weapons program is still unknown. In contrast, Iraq’s capabilities in chemical

weapons and missiles were relatively well-known. Inspectors destroyed 38,500

munitions, 480,000 liters of chemical agents, and 1.8 million liters of precursor

chemicals (but the fate of about 31,600 chemical munitions, 550 mustard gas bombs,

4,000 tons of chemical precursors and Iraq’s capabilities to produce VX agent are

still unknown). Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq had a robust missile force and some

domestic production capability, most of which was destroyed in the war. About 130

Soviet-supplied Scud missiles remained after the war; inspectors accounted for all

but two.10

The history of inspections in Iraq is well-known and well-documented. After

the first few years, most of the breakthroughs in knowledge about Iraqi WMD

programs either resulted from or benefitted from intelligence tips from governments

or from information provided by defectors.11 In particular, the defection of Hussein

The two official U.N. assessments of unresolved disarmament tasks in Iraq are the socalled Amorim report, U.N. Security Council S/1999/356, March 30, 1999, Final Report of

the Panel on Disarmament and Current and Future Ongoing Monitoring and Verification

I s s u e s a n d U N S C O M ’ s r e p o r t S / 1 9 9 9 / 9 4 ( b o t h a va i l a b l e a t

[http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/unscmdoc.htm]). For a comprehensive, unofficial

assessment see “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment,” (UK:

International Institute for Strategic Studies) September 9, 2002 and “Iraq: A Chronology of

U.S. Inspections and an Assessment of Their Accomplishments,” in Arms Control Today,

October 2002, Volume 32 Number 8. For unclassified assessments by the US and UK

intelligence communities, see “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,”

[http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.pdf] and “Iraq’s Weapons of

Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government,”

[http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp]

See Kenneth Katzman, CRS Issue Brief IB92117, Iraq: Weapons Threat, Compliance,

Sanctions, and U.S. Policy and Steve Bowman, Iraqi Chemical and Biological Weapons

(CBW) Capabilities, CRS Report 98-129.

See “Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A Ten(continued...)

CRS-5

Kamel, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, in 1995, provided an intelligence windfall

about WMD programs. (Kamel was subsequently lured back to Iraq and killed.)

The shortcomings of the inspections between 1991 and 1998 are also wellknown. Iraqi officials frequently delayed inspections, spied on inspectors (bugging

hotels and offices), harassed inspectors and lied about its capabilities.12 Major

problems included interviewing scientists and engineers with Iraqi “minders” in the

room, tip-offs of short-notice inspections, and exclusion from “sensitive sites.” Eight

presidential sites became a lightning rod for obstruction, with Iraq complaining of

violated sovereignty and accusing inspectors of spying.13 Former inspectors have

also detailed stories of confrontation and intimidation, including shooting over the

heads of inspectors, telephone threats, ransacking of hotel rooms, verbal and physical

abuse, as well as Iraq’s efforts to infiltrate the inspection regime with spies.14 In

addition, Iraqis systematically destroyed or removed evidence to mislead inspectors

about the capabilities of certain facilities. Over the 7 years, however, inspectors

developed their own techniques for getting around obstacles that the Iraqis placed in

their way. They made better use of intelligence resources, developed tactics to

mislead the Iraqis about intended destinations, and improved interviewing

techniques.

Two other features of the inspections from 1991 to 1998 were political friction

between UNSCOM and the IAEA, and increasing dissent among the permanent five

members (P-5) of the U.N. Security Council. According to some observers,

UNSCOM and the IAEA clashed over several issues, including sharing of

information, conduct of inspections, and approach to inspections. There were also

reports of friction between Rolf Ekeus, Executive Chairman of UNSCOM and Hans

Blix, then-Director General of the IAEA.15 Most apparent was a difference in how

aggressively inspections were conducted. Critics of UNSCOM suggest that an overly

aggressive approach is ultimately ineffective because inspectors cannot force Iraq to

cooperate; supporters suggest that UNSCOM inspectors were appropriately

aggressive in their techniques and approach, unburdened by any past relationship

with Iraq (unlike the IAEA).

(...continued)

Year Review,” Sponsored by the Institute for Science and Security, “Uncovering the Secret

Program – Initial Inspections, talk by Demetrius Perricos, Former Deputy Leader of the

IAEA Action Team. [www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/perricos.html] . See also Gary

Milhollin, “T he Ir aqi Bomb,” New Y or ker , Febr uar y 1, 1993.

[http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs/articles/1993/iraqibomb.html]

See October 8, 2002 briefing by DIA official John Yurechko to Pentagon reporters, at:

[http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2002/iraq-021008-dod01.htm].

Although inspectors were allowed to visit one of those sites, Iraq’s control of access

reportedly made the visit worthless.

Jonathan Tucker, “Monitoring and Verification in a Noncooperative Environment:

Lessons from the U.N. Experience in Iraq,” Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1996,

pp. 1-14.

Gary Milhollin, “The Iraqi Bomb,” New Yorker, February 1, 1993.

CRS-6

On the U.N. Security Council, “sanctions fatigue,” among other things, helped

weaken resolve over Iraq, which Iraq exploited. By the mid-1990s, UNSCOM

Chairman Ekeus was unable to get the Security Council to agree that Iraq was in

material breach of resolutions and in 1996, he compromised for the first time on the

modalities of visits. In October 1997, within days of China, France and Russia

abstaining on UNSCOM’s determination that Iraq was violating UNSCR 1115,

which required immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to all sites and

records, Iraq demanded U.S. personnel be withdrawn from UNSCOM. Iraq’s

obstruction intensified in 1998, and UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in December 1998

on the eve of U.S. and British air strikes (which became known as Operation Desert

Fox). Although their work of uncovering, destroying or rendering harmless Iraq’s

WMD capabilities was far from complete, they had reached an impasse.16

A New Inspection Regime: Resolution 1441

When the U.N. Security Council adopted UNSCR 1441, it sought to redress

some of the previous problems in inspections. UNSCR 1441 reaffirms the rights and

responsibilities of the inspectors and their Iraqi counterparts, but there are a few new

details, discussed below. A key issue in drafting the resolution was the question of

what would constitute a new material breach of Iraq’s obligations, since a low

threshold might make war more likely. UNSCR 1441 states that Iraq is currently in

material breach of its obligations and that “false statements or omissions in the

declarations and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the

implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach.”17 To

some, omissions in Iraq’s declaration by themselves would constitute a material

breach; to others, evidence of a lack of cooperation would additionally be required.

In the end, however, the U.N. Security Council did not vote on another resolution to

declare Iraq in material breach.

Protocols for Inspections

UNSCR 1441 attempted to enhance the previous inspection regime with a

reiteration of the inspections teams’ rights and responsibilities. It incorporated

agreements among Blix, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, and General

Amir H. Al-Saadi, an advisor on technical issues to President Saddam Hussein,

established in meetings on September 30 and October 1, 2002 in Vienna, Austria.

Those agreements are contained in an October 8 letter appended to the resolution.

In short, these include:

See CRS Issue Brief IB92117, Iraq: Weapons Threat, Compliance, Sanctions, and U.S.

Policy, by Kenneth Katzman, for a concise summary of inspections. See also SIPRI’s 2000

Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Appendix 9b, “The

future of chemical and biological weapon disarmament in Iraq: from UNSCOM to

UNMOVIC,” by Maria Wahlberg, Milton Leitenberg, and Jean Pascal Zanders, pp. 560-576.

See website for full text of UNSCR 1441. [http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm]

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UNMOVIC and the IAEA “will be granted immediate,

unconditional and unrestricted access to sites, including what was

termed ‘sensitive sites’ in the past.” Notwithstanding the 1998

memorandum of understanding on special procedures for the eight

presidential sites, the letter states that these sites may be subject to

the same access requirements.

! No restrictions on the size of inspection teams, on people to be

interviewed, as well as where and when they are interviewed, and on

communications modalities.

! Iraq must ensure that no proscribed material, equipment, records or

other relevant items are destroyed except by request of UNMOVIC

and/or IAEA inspectors and in their presence (as appropriate).

UNSCR 1441 states that the contents of the annexed letter would be binding

upon Iraq and outlined further authorities for UNMOVIC and the IAEA. UNMOVIC

and the IAEA have the right to:

provision of the names of all personnel currently and formerly

associated with Iraq’s chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic

missile programs and the associated research, development and

production facilities;

! be guarded by U.N. security;

! declare exclusion zones around facilities in order to “freeze” the area

so that nothing is changed in or taken out of a site; and

! free import and export of any equipment, materials or documents,

without search.

Timeline for Action

Resolution 1441 detailed a time-line of events, similar to earlier U.N. Security

Council resolutions.18 Within 7 days of UNSCR 1441 adoption on November 8,

2002, Iraq had to accept the resolution (Iraq accepted on November 13). Within 30

days, Iraq was required to provide a full declaration of all WMD programs (Iraq

provided on December 7). Within 45 days, inspections were to start (inspections

began on November 27), and within 60 days, UNMOVIC and the IAEA were

required to provide an update to the U.N. Security Council ( provided on January 27,

2003).

Since November 2002, both UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Blix and IAEA

Director General ElBaradei noted on multiple occasions that verification could be a

lengthy process and that it could take years to untangle information on what Iraq has

done. When inspectors were withdrawn on March 18, Blix expressed his

disappointment that they were not given more time to complete their task.19

UNSCR 687 gave IAEA and UNSCOM 45 days to plan inspections and 45 days to

implement inspections.

“US Reaps New Data on Weapons,” Washington Post, March 20, 2003.

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Challenges of Inspections

For the approximately three months of inspections, inspectors reported that the

Iraq was cooperating on access, with a few minor delays. Dr. Blix noted in his March

7 report that cooperation on process was better this time for UNMOVIC than it had

been for UNSCOM. It is possible that under the threat of war, Iraq assessed that

cooperation on process would help avoid war. It is likely that such cooperation

helped delay war but, probably, only full cooperation could have avoided war.

The four-year hiatus in inspections allowed Iraq to rebuild some facilities and

possibly relocate programs without U.N.inspectors in the country. Many observers

believed that Iraq developed new methods of concealment and obstruction, including

the use of tunneling under existing buildings to avoid excavations being detected by

satellites.20 As Blix noted in his March 6 working document on disarmament task:

UNMOVIC now faces the same situation in all three disciplines that UNSCOM

and the IAEA faced in 1991 regarding biological and nuclear weapons issues.

There are no leads, such as stocks of proscribed items, or WMD production

facilities for UNMOVIC to inspect. Instead, UNMOVIC must verify the absence

of any new activities or proscribed items, new or retained.21

Further, Blix noted in four years without inspections, Iraq potentially could have

made considerable progress in biological weapons and chemical weapons. Although

the chemical weapons program began in the late 1960s, Iraq was able to build most

of its Al Muthanna chemical weapons plant and begin large-scale production of CW

agents and munitions in just three years. With a biological weapons program that

started in 1974, Iraq took just two years to build the Al Hakam BW production plant

and produce more than 27,000 liters of concentrated BW agent.22

Reestablishing inspection support in Baghdad and in Cyprus was accomplished

quickly. Helicopter support became available in mid-December23 and U-2 and

Mirage 4 reconnaissance flights began only in late February. Procuring the requisite

expertise was also a challenge. Former inspectors have noted that in addition to a

requirement for knowledge of specific weapons, which is probably more limited in

the biological weapons and chemical weapons areas than in the missile or nuclear

areas (or at least more publicly sensitive), inspectors need a good grasp of weapons

production processes (particularly at dual-use sites) and a familiarity with Iraq’s

WMD programs. On the other hand, one former UNSCOM staffer in charge of

training for UNMOVIC remarked that: “You don’t need to be an expert in chemical

Richard Butler, former UNSCOM executive chairman, suggested to the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee in its hearings in summer 2002 that Iraq might have attempted to

tunnel under buildings to avoid detection from satellite imagery. Senate Foreign Relations

Committee hearing on Military Involvement in Iraq, July 31, 2002.

UNMOVIC Working Document, Unresolved Disarmament Issues, p. 11. See

[http://www.unmovic.org]

Ibid.

“State-of-Art Gear Displayed,” Washington Times, November 27, 2002.

CRS-9

or biological weapons. You just need to be able to spot deviations from the norm.”24

UNMOVIC provided training courses for inspectors. In the past, inspection teams

were able to draw on weapons expertise from member countries. Under UNMOVIC,

inspectors were required to be U.N. employees under rules adopted by the U.N. in

1999. This approach was adopted to help enhance the objectivity and

professionalism of inspectors (perhaps both in reality and in appearance). Critics of

these rules suggested the personnel system may not attract the best expertise, since

more highly qualified personnel may be unwilling to give up their current job

seniority and benefits for a short-term, non-career job at the U.N.as an inspector.

Others have suggested that this new, less flexible arrangement may have a negative

effect on intelligence sharing.25

On the process of intelligence sharing, there was some speculation that

UNMOVIC’s arrangement for information to flow through a top U.N.official from

member governments rather than to and from individual inspectors would have a

negative effect on intelligence sharing.26 According to critics, this arrangement might

actually decrease incentives for member states’ intelligence services to share

information, given that relatively less information might flow back to national

intelligence agencies. The impetus for establishing rules for intelligence sharing

came from Iraqi complaints in the 1990s that U.N. inspectors were gathering

intelligence, in some cases, for better targeting by air-strikes.27 Some of these claims

were substantiated. In practice, the UNSCOM established an Information

Assessment Unit (IAU) several years ago in New York, which, according to one

former inspector, became the locus of expertise and information on Iraq’s WMD

programs.28 The U.S. intelligence community in the 1990s worked on establishing

protocols for sharing sensitive information with international organizations, since it

was such a vital component of the inspection regime and a relatively new

phenomenon.

One particular criticism of the intelligence-sharing arrangement was that U.N.

inspectors would be ill-equipped to handle defector information because of lack of

experience in debriefing and inability to resettle defectors. Proponents of the role of

inspectors argued, however, that inspectors had the requisite background knowledge

to vet which defectors might actually have useful information. During the time

inspectors were on the ground from November 2002 to March 2003, however, there

were no known defectors from the Iraqi WMD community. Since March 2003, some

critics of the Bush Administration have increasingly questioned the accuracy of and

role of defector information in U.S. assessments of Iraq’s WMD capabilities.

“To Catch a Cheat,” Time, November 25, 2002.

“U.N.Restricts Inspectors’ Use of Intelligence Reports,” USA Today, November 27, 2002.

See also “We’re Not Spies, Says Inspection Chief,” Guardian, November 11, 2002.

Gordon Corera, “Playing the Iraqi Inspection Game,” Jane’s Intelligence Review,

November 2002, pp. 42-45

Ibid.

Tucker, “Monitoring and Verification in a Noncooperative Environment,” p. 5.

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On the substance of intelligence sharing, UNMOVIC and the IAEA complained

early on that the United States had not provided “actionable information” to

inspections in Iraq.29 On January 9, 2003, Secretary Powell stated that the United

States began sharing significant intelligence information on Iraqi weapons programs

a few days before. Powell also said that the United States was withholding sensitive

information.30 Blix, in his February 14 report to the U.N.Security Council noted that

intelligence sources had provided some assistance that was valuable, particularly in

the discovery of uranium enrichment documents in a private home on January 16,

2003, but led nowhere in other cases. In testimony to the Senate Select Committee

on Intelligence on February 11, 2003, Central Intelligence Director George Tenet said

that “we have given the U.N.inspectors and UNMOVIC every site that we have that

is of high or moderate value, where there is proven intelligence to lead to a potential

outcome.”31 In his March 7 briefing to the U.N.Security Council, Hans Blix noted

that he would rather have “twice the amount of high quality information about sites

to inspect than twice the number of expert inspectors to send.”32

A final technical challenge faced by the inspectors was in “proving the negative”

– that there were no remaining WMD programs. No one expects that inspections can

provide 100% confidence, and this is perhaps the reason for the insistence by many

that only a regime change could provide assurance that Iraq had no WMD programs.

Executive Chairman Hans Blix noted earlier this year that inspectors were more

likely to find “smoke, rather than a smoking gun.” Blix suggested, in describing

Iraq’s December 7 declaration, that “the absence of evidence means, of course, that

one cannot have confidence that there do not remain weapons of mass destruction.”33

Another challenge for the Security Council was the wide divergence of views

on the threshold for determining non-compliance. Anthony Cordesman raised a

question in hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about

whether the United States would be willing to go to war immediately if it found

evidence of a violation on missile testing or the existence of a biological facility.34

In fact, almost all of the discoveries by UNMOVIC from November 2002 to March

2003 – empty chemical weapons shells not previously declared; 2000 pages of

undeclared documents on uranium enrichment in a private home; undeclared

In late December 2002, the U.S. provided satellite intelligence about chemical and

biological weapons. See “U.S. Is To Release Spy Data on Iraq to Aid Inspections,” New

York Times, December 21, 2002. See also “U.N. Nuclear Agency Gains a Bigger Profile,

and Bigger Problems,” New York Times, January 6, 2003.

“US Is Sharing Iraq Data with Blix,” Washington Post, January 9, 2003.

George Tenet, Hearing on “Threats to U.S. Security” before the Senate Select Intelligence

Committee, February 11, 2003.

“Oral Introduction of the Twelfth Quarterly Report of UNMOVIC,” available at

[http://www.unmovic.org]

“Powell Says Iraq Raises Risk of War By Lying On Arms,” New York Times, December

20, 2002, p 1.

Discussion, July 31, 2002, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on Military

Involvement in Iraq.

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remotely piloted vehicles with wing spans of 7.5 meters;35 and cluster bombs that

could be used with chemical or biological agents – could have been interpreted as

evidence of noncompliance. But, by raising the stakes of noncompliance to the

conduct of war against Iraq, it seemed that some on the Security Council were

unwilling to place the bar so low.

Opportunities of Inspections

One of the key advantages inspections vis-a-vis military action was thought to

be the opportunity to conduct interviews. Yet, the interview process had mixed

results. Many observers believed it was necessary to pierce the veil of secrecy and

threat by either conducting interviews in private or even outside of the country. In

general, the IAEA had more success in conducting private interviews than

UNMOVIC, but even then, some interviews were conducted with tape recorders in

the room. UNMOVIC requested interviews with 38 individuals but interviewed just

five privately in February and nine in March. The IAEA conducted more than 9

private interviews in February, mostly with scientists connected to the gas centrifuge

uranium enrichment program.

Neither the IAEA nor UNMOVIC took advantage of the rights under UNSCR

1441 to interview scientists outside Iraq. Iraq agreed by the end of December to let

weapons scientists leave the country (as a personal decision) and provided a list of

500 experts to UNMOVIC and the IAEA,36 but only in March were Blix and

ElBaradei preparing to ask them to leave the country. Blix reported in his March 7

briefing that interviews outside Iraq might provide assurances of the absence of

undue pressures and that he planned to request such interviews soon. Some

observers believed that only interviews conducted outside of Iraq would be effective

because of the threat of retaliation by the Iraqi government.37 Others suggested that

conducting interviews outside of Iraq was not enough: only an offer of permanent

asylum could overcome fear of the regime’s potential future payback.

Hans Blix suggested that the U.N. was not in the business of enticing defectors

or abducting people. In addition to practical considerations (for example, lack of

experience in assisting defectors), the inspection teams reportedly had little if

anything to offer scientists that would outweigh the coercive power of the Iraqi

government over its citizens. Charles Duelfer, former deputy executive chairman of

UNSCOM, suggested that the U.N.should offer “sanctuary or safe haven to those

According to UNMOVIC spokesperson Ewen Buchanan, Iraq claimed that it had declared

the RPVs, saying that the information on wing spans was a typographical error – that the

4.4-meter span should have been 7.4-meter span.

“US Sees Showdown over Iraqi Scientists,” Washington Post, December 13, 2002; “Iraq

Gives U.N.a List of 500 Weapons Experts,” New York Times, December 29, 2002.

See Stephen F. Hayes, “Negotiations, Pentagon Style,” Weekly Standard, November 25,

2002, and James Kitfield, “Disclosure, Defectors Key to Inspections,” National Journal,

November 16, 2002.

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who find it a condition for speaking the truth.”38 He further suggested that “if

UNSCOM had 100 green cards to distribute during inspections, it could have quickly

accounted for the weapons programs.”

Inspectors used new technology, including ground-penetrating radar (to detect

hidden or underground equipment or facilities) and ultra-sensitive gamma ray

detectors (to detect radioactive materials through shielding).39 Rapid detection

techniques for biological agents, such as the Ruggedized Advanced Pathogen

Identification Device, or RAPID, were not available 10 years ago, nor were detectors

for specialized metal alloys, like ALEX (alloy expert), or toxic industrial materials

detectors (TIMs). Inspectors also used enhanced chemical agent monitors (ECAMS)

and handheld advanced nucleic acid analyzers (HANAA).40 The availability of

satellite imagery in digital format as well as digital photography helped facilitate realtime analysis, since it can be sent back to offices to be analyzed immediately.41

The appointment of Hans Blix, former Director General of the IAEA, as chief

UNMOVIC inspector probably helped cooperation between the U.N. agencies, in

sharp contrast to the friction of the 1991-1998 inspections. A former UNSCOM

inspector noted that the “bureaucratic turf battles between the two agencies ...made

their collaboration tense, and, at times, openly hostile.”42 The overlap in personnel

between the two organizations (for example, Demetrius Perricos, now acting

executive chairman of UNMOVIC, performed a similar role for the IAEA in the

1990s) probably helped minimize conflicting inspection styles and maximize

information sharing. To observers who felt that Blix was ineffectual at the IAEA and

who criticized what they saw as a complaisant approach toward Iraq from 1991 to

1998, however, greater synergy between the two teams might not be viewed as a

positive development.43

Charles Duelfer, “The Inevitable Failure of Inspections in Iraq,” Arms Control Today,

September 2002.

Romesh Ratnesar and Andrew Purvis, “To Catch a Cheat,” Time, November 25, 2002.