Read Part I
by Harvey Secord
Resolution 1441, like so many Security Council Resolutions at the time, dealt with Iraq. The Security Council does not pass many resolutions because the requirement to pass a resolution is not to get a majority of the members to vote for it, but rather, to get no member to vote against it. And with the diversity represented on the Security Council, it has proven exceptionally difficult to get all of its members (some permanent, some not) to agree.
After significant debate and after much negotiation between representatives of member nations, wording of a resolution was decided upon that managed to avoid any of these members voting against it. (The truth is that the work gets done in the background; the votes usually are just a fait accompli.)
Resolution 1441 is structured in typical UN legalese, but makes for a straightforward read. It starts with some background information explaining what the problems are, it makes various demands of Iraq as a means of addressing these problems, and then it discusses what will happen if Iraq does not comply.
We have already heard all of the talking points in response to this. One side wants to tell me that President Bush bribed some Security Council members and threatened others to get the resolution passed. The other side wants to tell us that President Bush did not even need to go to the Security Council in the first place! I cannot say that I am too bothered by either side. All that can matter to us is that the resolution was passed and that we should look at what it said. And we should look at what it said paragraph by paragraph. (How fortunate we are that it is only 5 pages long.)
The first paragraph reminds us of the previous resolutions on Iraq - 671 and 678 from the year 1990; 686, 687,688, 707, and 715 of 1991; 986 of 1995; and 1284 of 1999. The second paragraph reminds us of a further resolution - 1382, passed in 2001.
These resolutions deal with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the terms of Iraq's surrender, the terms of the ceasefire conditions on Iraq, the terms of the oil for food deal, and the creation of two separate teams of weapons inspectors.
The third paragraph tells us that Iraq has not complied with these resolutions, and this fact, combined with the "proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles" poses a threat to international peace and security.
Now I should point out that this resolution was passed about 3 months before Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous Security Council address, where he revealed American intelligence, just about all of which turned out to be false. The UN and various nations had for some time been asking the U.S. to reveal what it "knew" and the American government did not comply until the Powell speech in February, 2003.
At the time of Resolution 1441, the UN had its own list of unaccounted weapons of mass destruction, developed from the earlier weapons inspections which were never completed. In fact, Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector, was still saying of Iraqi WMD, "There is a long list of items unaccounted for...", some four months after the war had started in March of 2003. Blix correctly added that the fact that they are unaccounted for does not therefore prove that they existed. All that was known was that they existed at one point, and there was no knowledge of where they now were, if they still existed.
Blix, you should know, completely opposed the war. My point is not to try to blame Blix for the war. And I am not looking to find a justification for the war either. But at the same time I am not buying the view that the Bush administration invented concerns about WMD and somehow bullied Security Council members into voting in favour of this resolution based on hearsay.
My point is small - that prior to Powell's speech to the Security Council, it was widely accepted that there were unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These were weapons that were known to have existed at some point, and were now simply unaccounted for. And this was a straightforward breach of previous Security Council resolutions.
Now one weapons inspector - Scott Ritter - had been claiming for some years (from June 1999 to be specific), that Iraq no longer had any WMD nor the ability to produce them. Ritter faced a certain amount of ridicule, surely for political reasons, but also surely because this contradicts his own claims of ten months earlier. Iraq could, he said, "reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program." Ritter had no access to new information over these then months, so the vehemence of his new position was shocking.
Still, the vast majority maintained that, at the very least, there definitely were WMD not accounted for. And Ritter was not so much disputing this claim - he was, instead, making the further claim that he believed the unaccounted for weapons had been destroyed.
So, the third paragraph of Resolution 1441 reminds us that Iraq has not complied with a bunch of Security Council resolutions and has not accounted for all of its restricted weapons. Even more significantly, the third paragraph states that, from these facts, it follows that Iraq poses a threat to "international peace and security."
Now that's a judgment. The members of the Security Council are judging that the non-compliance with resolutions plus the potential risk from WMD is enough to classify Iraq as a threat to the world. Nations that would later oppose the war were here agreeing that Iraq posed a threat to the world.
Part III to follow next week.
Harvey Secord is a Canadian businessman who once dabbled in politics and specializes in disagreeing as an art form. He also writes as Mark Roxborough.