-Caveat Lector-
>
>
> www.wsws.org
>
> WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq
>
> Simmering tensions in UN Security Council as
>
> Richard Butler denounces Kofi Annan
>
> By Michael Conachy
> 12 August 1999
>
> Back to screen version
>
> The public war of words being conducted by former United Nations
> Special Commission (UNSCOM) Iraq weapons inspection chief,
> Richard Butler, against UN secretary general Kofi Annan, is part
> of an increasingly sharp conflict between the major powers on the
> UN Security Council over relations with Iraq.
>
> In the first week of August, Butler gave a series of interviews
> with Associated Press Television News, BBC television's Newsnight
> program, the new US-based Talk magazine, and the Age newspaper in
> Australia. With each interview his charges against Annan
> escalated, culminating in the accusation that Annan's office
> collaborated with the regime of Saddam Hussein to halt UNSCOM
> efforts to discover and destroy "weapons of mass destruction" in
> 1998.
>
> In the Age interview published on August 5, Butler declared:
> "There was a convergence of interests between Saddam Hussein and
> Kofi Annan. Saddam wanted UNSCOM out of his life so he could get
> on with his weapons program and Annan and his people wanted
> UNSCOM out of their lives because it was too independent.
>
> "Kofi Annan and his people sought to hand to Saddam Hussein the
> greatest possible prize—the destruction of UNSCOM.
>
> "There was a view in Mr Annan's office that a major part of the
> problem with all these recurrent Iraq crises was not Iraq's
> concealment of weapons or its blocking of inspections, but
> UNSCOM."
>
> A career diplomat and high profile UN official, Butler did not
> seek reappointment as head of UNSCOM in June of this year
> following revelations that the weapons inspection teams had
> become a front for US spying operations in Iraq.
>
> Since leaving his UN post, Butler has been appointed a "diplomat
> in residence" at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York—a
> leading US foreign policy think tank. The views he espouses from
> his plush office in Park Avenue express opinions circulating in
> the Clinton administration and the US foreign policy
> establishment about relations with the UN and with Iraq.
>
> Tensions in UN Security Council
>
>
> The UN Security Council has been a battleground over Iraq since
> the US and Britain launched the four day "Operation Desert Fox"
> bombings in December 1998. The bombings followed an UNSCOM
> report, drafted by Richard Butler and US government officials,
> alleged that Iraq was not complying with weapons inspections.
> Military action was opposed and condemned by three out of five
> permanent members of the council: France, Russia and China.
>
> Tensions remain over the lifting of economic sanctions and the
> continuing airstrikes against Iraq. A meeting in late June was
> presented with three different proposals for overcoming the
> stalemate.
>
> A British-Dutch proposal, supported tentatively by the US, tied
> the lifting of sanctions to the completion of "key remaining
> tasks" of weapons destruction by Iraq and the resumption of
> monitoring and inspection. The resolution has been described as
> largely a continuation of the old policy.
>
> Russia and China proposed the lifting of sanctions and
> establishment of a new arms control body to replace UNSCOM.
> France supported the Russia-China proposal, but had its own draft
> proposal for lifting sanctions in steps and maintaining financial
> controls over Iraq.
>
> No agreement could be reached and Britain's UN ambassador, Jeremy
> Greenstock told reporters that "fundamental difficulties remain."
> A comment in the Financial Times on August 9 warned that the
> ongoing deadlock "undermines the credibility of the Security
> Council". It says the search for a solution, "must not deepen
> divisions in the council... A resolution on Iraq should therefore
> be put to the vote only if it commands general agreement in the
> west."
>
> Russia and France have publicly condemned ongoing airstrikes,
> which killed at least 34 civilians and wounded another 40 in Iraq
> during July. In the wake of the latest attacks, the Pentagon has
> confirmed that US-British planes have conducted 108 bombing
> missions against Iraq since the beginning of the year.
>
> Following the July 18 bombings near Najaf, a French Foreign
> Ministry spokesperson, Anne Gazeau-Secret, told the BBC, "One
> cannot but feel uneasy about the continuation of these raids for
> months whose aim we do not fully understand."
>
> The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Vladimir Rakhmanin
> bluntly described the airstrikes as a "crude violation of the
> fundamental norms of international law."
>
> Iraq has rejected both the British and French proposals for
> lifting sanctions as inadequate and appealed to the UN and Arab
> League to halt US-British attacks. The country is now entering
> the tenth year of economic sanctions imposed by the UN following
> the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. According to Denis Halliday,
> a former UN coordinator of humanitarian aid to Iraq, the
> sanctions are responsible for the death of up to 6,000 Iraqi
> people every month.
>
> The role of Richard Butler and UNSCOM
>
>
> Just as the recent war against Yugoslavia proceeded with spurious
> and exaggerated claims of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide", the
> US-British bombardment of Iraq last December was accompanied by
> an unending chorus of accusations that Iraq was manufacturing and
> stockpiling "weapons of mass destruction".
>
> Now that the war in Yugoslavia is finished for the present, the
> major imperialist powers are returning to unfinished business in
> the Persian Gulf. As no weapons inspections have taken place
> since December 1998, the old bogey of "weapons of mass
> destruction" is being revived with Butler asserting—in the face
> of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that Iraq continues
> chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
>
> A brief review of events in Iraq in 1997 and 1998, and the role
> of Richard Butler and UNSCOM, shows that the conflict between
> Iraq and the UN agency centred on the latter's spying activities.
>
> It is now openly acknowledged that UNSCOM was thoroughly riddled
> with intelligence agents working for the US, Britain and Israel
> since its beginnings in 1991. A close relationship existed
> between the UN inspection agency and US intelligence agencies,
> which supplied UNSCOM with high-tech equipment enabling the UN
> inspectors to eavesdrop on secret communications between the
> elite military units responsible for Hussein's personal security.
>
> In September 1996, then-chairman of UNSCOM, Swedish diplomat Rolf
> Ekeus, had complained in a letter to CIA Director John Deutch
> that the US agency was not sharing the fruits of the electronic
> monitoring conducted by UNSCOM inspectors on the ground in
> Baghdad. This was the first of a series of clashes between UNSCOM
> and the CIA over control of the joint operation, which resulted
> in the resignation of Ekeus.
>
> Butler was appointed head of UNSCOM in July 1997. Under Butler's
> direction, UNSCOM actively sought to engineer a pretext for
> military strikes, in line with US policy. When Iraq demanded the
> removal of US spies from the UNSCOM inspection teams in November
> 1997, Butler accused them of non-compliance with the Security
> Council, precipitating a crisis. Subsequent public exposure of
> the US spying operations proves that the Iraqi demands were
> entirely legitimate.
>
> Significantly, in the Age interview, Butler traces the beginning
> of his conflict with Annan to this time. He says that Annan was
> prepared to comply with the demands of Iraq, asking why weapons
> inspections could not be carried out without American
> involvement. In spite of the opposition of the UN chief, Butler
> withdrew his inspection teams from Iraq, and the US geared up for
> airstrikes.
>
> Butler complains that Annan preferred diplomacy over force in
> dealing with Iraq. Like the US military and national security
> establishment, he was outraged when Annan averted military action
> with a last minute diplomatic settlement in Iraq on February 22,
> 1998. As the deadline for military action by the US and Britain
> approached, Annan's office—at the urging of France in particular,
> and with the support of Russia and China—secured an agreement to
> allow the return of the UNSCOM inspectors.
>
> The World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, "In this instance
> the UN became the vehicle for sections of the European
> bourgeoisie whose imperialist interests in the Gulf have brought
> them into conflict with American policy ... French transnational
> corporations have large investments in Iraq's oil industry and
> stand to benefit enormously from a lifting of UN sanctions.
> Similarly, the Yeltsin regime in Russia, the other major sponsor
> of Annan's mission, has definite economic and strategic interests
> in Iraq..."
>
> After Annan's diplomatic agreement, Butler and his teams returned
> to Iraq and a new round of provocations began. Scott Ritter, a
> former weapons inspector who quit in 1998, confirms that
> following their return to Iraq in March 1998, UNSCOM monitoring
> of Iraqi communications ended, and the CIA unilaterally took
> control.
>
> There are claims that Richard Butler, having been persuaded by
> Clinton administration officials, facilitated the handover of
> intelligence gathering to Washington. Butler denies any knowledge
> of US intelligence operations and told the Age that he did not
> believe that it had occurred.
>
> Ritter contradicts Butler's claims of ignorance and says there
> was a difference between gathering information for UNSCOM and
> gathering information for Washington. "Stuff was being collected
> without our knowledge and without Butler's knowledge," he told
> interviewers. "That's espionage. My team was worried. I told
> Butler about it—the American operation—and said we had to shut it
> down. It didn't happen."
>
> Having learned their lesson from February, the US and Britain did
> not refer military strikes to the UN in December. When Butler
> presented his report alleging Iraqi obstruction and
> non-compliance with weapons inspections, and withdrew his teams
> from Iraq, US-British forces attacked. France, which had until
> then participated in air patrols, withdrew its aircraft from the
> allied forces.
>
> A recent article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker cites US
> intelligence sources confirming that a central aim of "Operation
> Desert Fox" was the assassination of Saddam Hussein. Among
> targets in the first wave of bombings were private residences,
> identified by UNSCOM monitoring, where Hussein reportedly
> entertained his lovers.
>
> Butler alleges Annan's office sought to undermine UNSCOM because
> it was too "independent" of the UN. It is incontrovertible,
> however, that UNSCOM—created by the UN Security Council with a
> mandate to investigate and ensure compliance with weapons
> control—had become, by early 1998, an instrument of a US policy
> agenda of overthrowing the government of Iraq by the use of
> military force.
>
> This was known by the UN chief. A source close to Annan, quoted
> in the Washington Post in January 1999, explained the antagonisms
> between the UN chief and UNSCOM in the following terms: "The
> secretary-general has become aware of the fact that UNSCOM
> directly facilitated the creation of an intelligence collection
> system for the United States in violation of its mandate. The
> United Nations cannot be party to an operation to overthrow one
> of its member states. In the most fundamental way, that is what's
> wrong with the UNSCOM operation."
>
> In the “most fundamental way”, this is what is “wrong” with Kofi
> Annan and the UN in the eyes of Richard Butler and US foreign
> policy circles. The US goal was to kill Saddam Hussein, overthrow
> his government, and establish a more compliant regime. Annan's
> office however echoed the interests of Russia, China and France,
> which had their own interests in Iraq and did not wish to see a
> US puppet regime established.
>
> Unilateralism
>
>
> Butler's attacks on Annan do not only concern Iraq but are part
> of a broader US foreign policy agenda. In February 1998, when
> Annan's diplomacy removed the pretext for US airstrikes, there
> were bitter recriminations within the US political establishment.
> Typical was the comment of right-wing columnist William Kristol,
> who wrote: "It is ridiculous for us to make a serious matter of
> national interest hostage to negotiations conducted by the
> secretary general of the United Nations."
>
> Since then the US has increasingly operated outside of the
> auspices of the UN. Accepting no limitations on its freedom of
> activity, the US has conducted on-going military strikes on Iraq
> regardless of opposition within the Security Council. The entire
> 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia early this year was conducted
> under the auspices of NATO, without UN Security Council approval,
> and in contravention of international law.
>
> Butler has prepared an article for the forthcoming issue of the
> prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine which sheds light on the
> trajectory of the debate in US ruling circles. Criticising the UN
> Security Council for failing to implement arms control in Iraq,
> he lays the blame on the veto powers because they "are abused by
> permanent members in defence of interests, client States and
> ideological concerns that very often had nothing to do with
> maintaining peace and security."
>
> In other words, while Russia, China and France have "interests,
> client states and ideological concerns", American concerns are
> equated with "peace and security". Stripped of their
> self-justification, Butler's views coincide with a rising tide of
> opinion in ruling circles that in the present period of
> increasing great power conflicts, the UN has outlived its purpose
> as a means of furthering US interests.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Copyright 1998-99
> World Socialist Web Site
> All rights reserved
<<And so, the UN is ignored in the case of the Balkans ... >>
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