September 1999

Shortly after the defeat of Hitler and the revelations of what he had done to the Jewish people of Europe, there were two great events: The trials at Nuremburg of Nazi war criminals, and the conference at San Francisco on the Charter of the United Nations. At the former, one thing which was made clear is that there is a category of law called ‘crimes against humanity’, and that individuals who commit those crimes will be held responsible for them. Any claim that they simply obeyed orders would be rejected.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, in San Francisco, a Charter was drafted for the United Nations which established the maintenance of peace and security as one of the major objectives in international life. One key principle in the Charter spelt out that nations should not invade others, which is what Iraq did in Kuwait 45 years later. The Charter aimed at saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The maintenance of international peace and security would be given into the hands of a new body, called the Security Council. That was the purpose behind its creation and its mandate. Importantly, the Charter of the United Nations made the Security Council’s decisions binding in international law.

That was fifty years ago. Not until 1990 did we actually have the first instance of complete disregard for the very basic principle of the Charter of the UN, namely the invasion by Iraq of Kuwait. By this act, Saddam Hussein put himself in the record books as being the only member state of the UN to seek to absorb a fellow member state. And when the Security Council decided that this invasion would not be allowed to stand and that Iraq must be ejected, it made some very important law. Saddam was told in effect that he would be divested of his weapons of mass destruction and that he would suffer sanctions until that takes place. The Council created UNSCOM to carry out that work, which was to destroy, remove or render harmless Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which were specified as including all missiles with a range of more than 150 kilometres and all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. This represents the heaviest piece of law that the Security Council had made since the Second World War with respect to any country and also with respect to disarmament.

Saddam’s behaviour towards Kuwait, and the revelations of the weapons he had created, the purposes to which he had put them, and clearly further intended to use them, can be seen as a direct descendant of what we saw Hitler trying to do 45 years earlier. But, as against the period of Hitler, we now have an instrument to deal with this dictator.

The Special Commission then set about doing the job that the Security Council had given it. Over the first seven to eight years, it carried out it task basically successfully. But this job should never have taken seven or eight years. When the Security Council demanded Iraq’s disarmament, it had in mind that the job of the Special Commission should be completed in about twelve months. Iraq was to declare all its weapons within fifteen days: it is now almost three thousand days since that requirement was enunciated. By the time I took up the job in early 1997, the Special Commission had actually accounted for, or disposed of a very substantial portion of Iraq’s missile and chemical weapons force and atomic weapons research. We had, however, no satisfactory idea of its biological weapons force.

In Baghdad, within three weeks of the start of my job, I made very clear to Tariq Aziz that there was a short list of key remaining requirements and that this list was irreducible. This began a process that lasted through 1997 and until 3 August last year. I insisted that I would never be prepared or able to report to the Security Council that Iraq was disarmed until they gave me these last materials and last bits of evidence. Iraq purported to give some of the materials, only for us to find that much of it was bogus, or they said the materials and evidence we wanted did not exist. We found that those were lies. For example, about VX, the most potent chemical warfare agent known to humankind, Iraq lied to us for years about its production, saying it had only made 200 litres of the substance. We were able to demonstrate that it made 4000 litres. They then shifted their ground, admitting our figure was closer to the truth than theirs, saying they never put it into weapons. We found evidence of VX having been placed in warheads. I took this to Baghdad in June-July 1998.

On August 3 last year, Aziz, on Saddam Hussein’s instructions, shut us down. They knew that a decision to alleviate sanctions on Iraq depended utterly on the fulfilment of that list of requirements. Aziz told me that my duty was to go back to the Security Council in New York and tell them that Iraq had complied and that if I would not the 22 million Iraqis suffering under sanctions would be on my conscience. I told him that I would not and could not do it, that Iraq could not be found to be disarmed simply by declaration. There had to be hard evidence. I noted that I proposed to sleep soundly that night.

Why would Saddam put at risk the welfare of 22 million people? His preference for these weapons has to do with his view of his own authority within Iraq, where he has previously used these weapons on his own people and his main enemies, as he sees them, the Iranians and the Israelis. This is the quintessential rogue state in the post-Hitler period. He has insisted that he will not obey the law of the Security Council. He is opposing the whole of the post-World War II system. The Security Council is now divided over the way in which it needs to deal with him. Will he win or will civilisation? That is in the hands of the Security Council.

I don’t know what conclusions they will come to. I propose a solution, whereby the veto should not be used by any permanent member of the Security Council on an arms control matter. There is absolutely no substitute, in dealing with rogue states, for the major powers of the civilised world, whatever their differences, to stand together. The answer to Saddam must be: ‘you have no where else to go but to obey the law’.

Copyright © AIJAC 1999
Last Updated 3 September, 2001