Word: unscom
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...Survey Group's report, expected in the next two weeks, may have been raised by administration officials who, when facing a clamor over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction early in the summer, called for patience and expressed confidence that the group led by former UNSCOM official David Kay would prove the existence of such weapons. Subsequently, officials began to downshift somewhat, stressing that evidence would be found of programs to build weapons, but not necessarily any actual weapons. But Kay himself may also have contributed to raising expectations during his Capitol Hill report-back in July, when...
...Reality check: Hans Blix was appointed head of UNMOVIC in 1999. UNMOVIC differed from its predecessor, UNSCOM, in that it hired its own personnel with a budget drawn from the oil-for-food program. UNSCOM had relied on personnel seconded by intelligence services of the UN member states, and the result was that its independence was compromised by officials conducting espionage work on behalf of their own governments. So Blix's appointment and UNMOVIC's staffing policies were a done deal, and were not up for review in the wake of President Bush's address. Curiously, also, President Bush...
...troops in Iraq will not find any facilities with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). I am sure of that," says a former chemical and biological weapons expert of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) who remains close to and intimately informed about the recent U.N. arms inspection effort in Iraq. The expert (who requested anonymity) says that Baghdad ?most likely? has shut down any WMD operations. He added that any munitions it may still possess ?are most likely now in the field and being moved around the country...
...also not confirming it. We have to go by evidence. The Iraqis live in a tense situation. If there is something, they would be gambling not to present it. UNMOVIC relies on U.N. member states for intelligence support, and such cooperation was a big source of friction between UNSCOM and the Iraqis. Will that relationship be handled differently this time around? Yes. It seems clear that UNSCOM lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the world by having too close a relationship with the intelligence agencies. We want intelligence from as many sources as possible, but we don't want...
...personality as well as the fact that nobody took UNMOVIC that seriously until two months ago, when President Bush warned the U.N. to disarm Saddam or step aside. Suddenly, UNMOVIC was at the center of the action for the first time since it was created in 1999 to replace UNSCOM, the inspection team that was withdrawn from Iraq after being denied access to sensitive sites. Blix, who spent 16 years heading the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was tapped to lead UNMOVIC when the U.S.'s preferred pick, former UNSCOM chief Rolf Ekeus, was nixed by France and Russia...