U.N. Extends Iraq Sanctions to Gain Cooperation on Arms

The Security Council extended 5-year-old trade sanctions against Iraq on Friday, weeks after Baghdad admitted having made toxin-tipped missiles and bombs.

“We have always assumed that Iraqi officials are lying when they say they are providing ‘full disclosure,’ and our skepticism has been proven correct time and time again,” Edward Gnehm, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told the council.

“Iraq has intentionally doled out, bit by bit, piece by piece, information that gave only a glimpse of the program’s skeleton,” he said.

Security Council members have said they will not consider easing the sanctions--which include a ban on oil sales--until Iraq fully cooperates with U.N. monitors overseeing the destruction of Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction. The sanctions, imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, are reviewed every 60 days.

Last month, after the defection to Jordan of its weapons chief, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majid, Iraq disclosed an ambitious biological weapons program. In July, Baghdad admitted for the first time having germ stockpiles, including anthrax and botulism cultures. The information came after U.N. inspectors found 130,000 gallons of biological agents.

Iraqi scientists also had been trying to develop toxins that destroy crops and leave people incapacitated, U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer said Thursday.

Iraq claims to have destroyed the toxins in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War, he said. Gnehm said those claims must be verified.

U.N. resolutions require Iraq to destroy its long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, biological and chemical--before the sanctions are lifted.