Russia Offers Alternative to U.N. Arms Program in Iraq

Russia on Friday proposed dismantling the U.N. weapons inspection program in Iraq and replacing it with a less aggressive organization under the tight control of the Security Council.

The United States quickly rejected the plan.

“Eventually, down the road, there is a need for a [new] monitoring system. But in the short term and the medium term, we reject the proposal,” said Peter Burleigh, the U.S. representative to the U.N.

Burleigh said Russia’s plan is based on a false assumption--that Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is depleted.

Russia’s proposal to abolish the arms inspection program comes as a badly divided Security Council tries to pick up the diplomatic rubble after U.S.-British bombings against Iraq in December. This week, France and the United States offered widely divergent plans on how to deal with Iraq.

After the U.S.-British bombardment, Baghdad vowed that it will not allow either the U.N. Special Commission, charged with dismantling Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or the International Atomic Energy Agency to reenter the country.

In its latest blistering attack, Iraq on Friday turned down a Clinton administration offer to allow Baghdad to sell as much oil as it can to buy food and medicine.

Iraq countered that only a complete lifting of international sanctions will be acceptable. The strict controls were imposed by the Security Council after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

“Iraq will not accept that its people are transformed into a refugee camp by American and British pilots,” Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said.

The core issue before the Security Council is the future of arms inspections. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.N. commission, or UNSCOM, was created to ferret out chemical and biological weapons and components that could be used to build nuclear weapons.

Russia’s proposal, which rejected the notion of on-site inspections, called for splitting UNSCOM’s work among other agencies and for establishing a monitoring center in New York, with an office in Baghdad.

In essence, it would end the search for existing stocks of weapons and would concentrate on trying to prevent Hussein from acquiring forbidden arms.

Russia said that, in the post-bombing environment, UNSCOM “in its present format obviously cannot any longer work in Iraq.”

“In order to resume an international monitoring of the Iraqi proscribed military programs and prevent the reconstruction by Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, it is necessary to establish a new body adequate to the new situation,” the proposal stressed.

Russia also called for lifting sanctions on imports to Iraq.

The proposal would use the expertise of the current weapons investigators. It called for an assessment mission by Security Council representatives and technical experts, some from UNSCOM, to Iraq.

The group’s task would be to work out proposals designed to resume cooperation between Baghdad and the United Nations.