U.N. Plans to Send Top Arms Inspector to Iraq

The Security Council intends to send a senior U.N. official to Iraq immediately to demand compliance with resolutions on future U.N. monitoring of Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction, U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering said Tuesday.

Amid growing concern about Iraq’s ability to rebuild its arsenal of such weapons, Pickering told reporters the council would issue a statement today authorizing Rolf Ekeus, head of the U.N. special commission in charge of scrapping the weapons, to go to Baghdad as soon as possible.

Pickering, this month’s council president, said Ekeus reported to the council on “serious, grave and even appalling Iraqi disdain” for the council’s decisions.

Today’s statement would include a “wish of the council members to have Ambassador Ekeus go to Baghdad to consult at the highest political level to secure the Iraqi commitment to comply with those resolutions,” he said.

Iraq has maintained that U.N. proposals to monitor many of its industries that could in the future be used to manufacture weapons are illegal and violate its sovereignty.

The United Nations, including the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, is also not certain all materials that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons have been discovered by the teams of inspectors that have visited Iraq since last summer.

Ekeus is to make his trip to Baghdad before Iraq sends top officials to speak to the Security Council in March on what Baghdad needs to do to get an 18-month trade embargo lifted.