On September 16, 2002, the deadlock at the UN Security Council keeps the weapon inspectors and their boss, Hans Blix, waiting for a decision. They wanted to move to Iraq on October 19, 2002, but now the earliest date is thought to be sometime in November. The delay is due mainly to the US/British insistence on a tough resolution that the other three permanent members -China, France, and Russia- do not accept. The US is now thinking of presenting its own resolution to the Security Council around October 20. This Americans would ask the Security Council to impose very strict rules on Iraq such as allowing foreign troops -that is, US soldiers- protecting the UN weapon inspectors and, if Iraq refuses, then the US and Britain would invade the country. On this the US and Britain are isolated as the other three permanent members, China, France and Russia, as well as other countries like Australia, the European Union countries, Japan, and even Kuwait, are against it.
Hans Blix, the Swede who is heading the United Nations weapon inspection team, got his job in 2000; his name was proposed by France that vetoed the American candidate. At the end of October 2002 Blix went public asking, before sending his inspectors, for a strong UN resolution demanding unrestricted access to all sites in Iraq backed by the threat of force. This is very close to President Bush's position but the majority of the Security members, including France and Russia, do not accept it. The American newspapers say that this undermines the argument that Bush in only looking for a pretext to go to war and takes charge of the Iraqi oil fields. Without a strong UN resolution, Blix added that he probably wouldn't send his inspectors to Iraq to search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. He added, however, that the US proposals to give Saddam Hussein a 30-days deadline to give a full inventory of his weapons, and demanding the transfer of Iraqi officials and their family out of Iraq for questioning, go too far.
- On November 8, 2002, the US media said that the UN plans to impose an early
test on Iraq's will to let the weapon inspectors do their job as they see
fit. They will ask Iraq for a complete list of weapons sites, and compare
it with the more that a hundred priority sites compiled by western experts.
- On November 17, 2002, an advance team of UN inspectors was in Cyprus hoping
to fly to Baghdad on November 18. They plan to start the inspections on November
27, Iraq having until December 8 to declare all their weapon programs.
- On November 18, 2002, Mr Hans Blix and about thirty UN weapons inspectors
arrived in Baghdad with at their head. They will prepare the ground for the
team of 270 inspectors from 44 nations; the largest group is the American's
with about 30 experts. The national governments chose fifty percents of the
inspectors. The others are experts recruited by the UN.
- On November 27, 2002, the UN weapons inspectors started to work in Iraq.
They checked two sites, and were happy with the result and the Iraqi collaboration.
- The UN inspectors went on with their job and, on December 1 2002, they admitted
that they had not found anything yet, and that the collaboration of the Iraqi
was good.
- On Sunday December 8, 2002 twenty-five more inspectors arrived in Iraq.
Until now the inspections went smoothly with good Iraqi cooperation. With
now about 42 inspectors on the ground, they checked many more sites on December
9, 2002, including, for the third times, a big research nuclear centre. They
should be a hundred by the end of the year, and up to 300 later on.
- On December 11, 2002, the UN inspectors visited a nuclear Research Centre,
a new missile factory, a site where Iraq tried to produce enriched uranium
in the past, and a uranium mine in the desert near the border with Syria,
but they did not find anything special. There are now 98 inspectors in Iraq.
- Before taking Iraqi scientists and their families out of Iraq for interrogation,
the UN inspectors want to be certain that they will be given US asylum, if
required. But the USA would like to give this right only to those scientists
who are giving interesting information, that is information that Iraq is working
on weapons of mass destruction, true or not.
- The UN weapon inspectors have sent their first samples of air, soil, dust
and water to the laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency in
Vienna, Austria.
- On December 23, 2002, the UN weapon inspectors have started interviewing
Iraqi scientists. However, they have not yet taken any outside Iraq. They
could do it in the future but apparently, only if the scientists agreed. Their
family would be taken out too. Washington agreed to give a limited amount
of information to the UN inspectors to facilitate their job. However, the
bulk of the intelligence will be kept secret. The excuse given is that giving
this information to the UN inspectors would put their sources in danger. More
probably they have no proof.
- General Hosssam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison to the UN inspectors,
said that at the end of 2002, 237 sites had been visited, the UN inspectors
did not find any weapon of mass destruction, the Iraqi had fully cooperated,
and the American allegations and claims to the contrary are false, baseless,
and that the US is lying for political reasons.
- On January 4, 2003, the UN inspectors are setting a new office in Mosul
in northern Iraq to facilitate their work in this part of the country.
- On January 15, 2003, the UN inspectors visited a presidential palace in
Baghdad and searched two high security buildings for evidence of prohibited
weapons. They probably acted on information received from US intelligence.
On the same day, Iraq complained to the UN about the US' plan to use U-2s
and unmanned Predator spy planes to help the inspectors doing their work.
- On January 16, 2003, the UN inspectors finally found 11 empty chemical warheads
(rockets) and another one that needed some more tests. They were old rockets
-22 years old perhaps- that had been left in storage for many years. Hans
Blix said that they did not constitute a "smoking gun" but, of course,
President Blush jumped on the opportunity to say that this could be the justification
for invading Iraq. All the other countries, including Britain, played it down.
The Iraqis found four more on Sunday January 19, 2003.
- An Iraqi physicist, Professor Faleh Hassan, said that the UN inspectors
had removed some documents from his private home on January 15, 2003. He added
that these documents are related to some uranium enrichment research using
laser technology in which he was involved in the years 1970/1980s. He insisted
that the research was stopped in 1987 because the process was too complicated
and replaced, at that time, by more promising approaches.
- At the end of January 2003, the UN nuclear inspectors said that the aluminium
tubes imported by Iraq for their rockets programme could be used to enrich
uranium, but this would have required substantial modifications. ElBaradei
still believes that they were intended for the Iraqi conventional rocket programme.
- On February 12, 2003, the UN inspectors found some illegal missiles. Iraq
is allowed to have missiles with a range not exceeding 150 km. The tests of
the al-Samoud 2 missiles showed that they could reach up to 183 km!! This
does not increase the danger to any Iraq's neighbours, but it is against the
UN-imposed missile range limitation. President Bush and Prime Minister Tony
Blair were soon claiming loud and clear that Iraq had breached the terms of
the UN resolution 1441, and that invasion was justified.
- On February 18, 2003, an Iraqi scientist, Sa'ad Ahmed Mahmoud, the deputy
director of a company producing rocket motors, dismissed the idea that Iraq
had tried to divert aluminium rocket tubes to its nuclear programme.
- Around February 25, 2003, the Iraqis admitted that they had found a bomb
with a possible biological warhead, and many documents on weapons disposal.
Hans Blix said that this was a positive point in favour of Iraq but, as usual,
Bush dismissed this as "playing games".
- After the invasion, on April 10 2003, the UN Inspectors expressed concern
that warehouses containing highly radioactive materials under UN seals may
have been broken into at al-Tuwaitha, the Iraqi secret nuclear bomb project.
The nuclear complex is now under Marine guards and is being investigated by
the Pentagon's experts.
- On June 7, 2003, a team of the AIEA has started to inspect a nuclear site
in Iraq for the first time since the war.
- On April 2, 2005, we were told that the US ignored the work of UN inspectors
who had extraordinary access in Iraq between November 2002 and March 2003.
Months before US troops attacked Iraq, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) challenged every piece of evidence the Bush administration offered
to support claims of a nuclear program in the country. In January 2003, IAEA
inspectors discovered that documents showing Iraq had tried to buy uranium
from Niger were forged, but the CIA chose to stick to the claim for another
six months. The IAEA assessment, which turned out to be accurate, was first
shared with US intelligence in July 2001. Hans Blix' inspectors also showed
before the war that CIA claims about a fleet of pilotless Iraqi planes were
incorrect. The unmanned aerial vehicles did not have the capability to deliver
chemical or biological weapons and were probably designed for reconnaissance
missions. The Bush administration prevented the agency to make new inspections
Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.