Into the Breach

U.S. officials have declared Iraq in material breach of its obligation to present a "full and complete" declaration of its weapons of mass destruction. As a factual matter the Iraqi declaration is indeed inadequate. But Baghdad's failure to provide a satisfactory weapons report is not a deal breaker. It will not prevent the UN from achieving the effective disarmament of Iraq, and it is not a legal justification for war.

Iraq has been in violation of the obligation to report its weapons holdings for more than 11 years, since the Security Council first imposed this requirement in Resolution 707 in Aug. 1991. The most recent Security Council measure, Resolution 1441 adopted in Nov. 2002, acknowledged this pattern of deceit by declaring Iraq in material breach. During the 1990s Iraq submitted several weapons declarations, none of which was full or complete. Baghdad's most recent report apparently follows the same pattern. Although some 12,000 pages in length, the Iraqi document has "not much significant new information," according to chief UN inspector Hans Blix. U.S. Secretary of State Powell said that the document contains "serious omissions."

At issue is Iraq's apparent failure to address uncertainties identified by previous UN inspections. The Jan. 1999 final report of the earlier UN special commission and a Mar. 1999 Security Council report raised questions about a number of unresolved weapons issues. These included Iraq's failure to document its claim to have destroyed chemical weapons and missile warheads. Also unaccounted for were large volumes of chemical precursor elements, biological growth media and more than a dozen indigenously produced Iraqi missiles. In the new report, according to Blix, most of these uncertainties "remain unresolved."

According to Blix's Dec. 19 statement to the Security Council, the Iraqi declaration consists mostly of a rehash of previously submitted documents. In a few areas, however, the declaration provides useful new information. According to Blix, the report provides new documentation on chemical weapons that may "help to achieve a better understanding of the fate of the precursors." The report also provides information on the import of aluminum tubes for a short-range rocket system. This information, in Blix's words, "may be relevant to well-publicized reports concerning the importation of aluminum tubes." This is a diplomatic way of saying that U.S. and British claims about the use of these tubes for uranium enrichment may be incorrect. On the other hand, the report omits previously submitted information about the import of bacterial growth media used for the production of anthrax.

The overall impression is that the Iraqi weapons declaration is seriously flawed. This is a matter of concern, but it is not a major threat to security. It is important to keep Iraq's weapons declaration in perspective. None of the reported omissions or discrepancies involves the capability to develop nuclear weapons. Nor is there any reported indication that Iraq has functional long-range missiles. The concerns about chemical or biological capabilities involve mostly precursor elements not militarily deliverable weapons. There is no evidence from the report or in anything UN inspectors have revealed so far that Iraq has rebuilt its weapons of mass destruction. Blix told the Security Council that at this point the UN commission is "neither in a position to confirm . . . nor in possession of evidence to disprove" Iraq's claim that it no longer has such weapons.

On the other hand, there is overwhelming evidence that most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were eliminated in the 1990s. UN reports confirm that previous weapons inspections dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons infrastructure, accounted for all but two of Iraq's 819 Scud missiles, and destroyed all of the country's known chemical and biological weapons production facilities. Nothing in the new Iraqi declaration or the U.S. and UN reaction to it suggests anything different. Iraq is a weakened power. It suffered military defeat in 1991, more than a decade of UN sanctions and 7 years of vigorous on-site inspections, all of which resulted in a significant reduction of its capacity to commit aggression or develop weapons of mass destruction.