Word: unscom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...search of concealed weapons were no more than CIA agents working for Washington. Saddam is a poor candidate for victimhood, but last week his protests got a boost as a leak-and-leak-again battle between the U.N. and the U.S. spun out. The suggestion: U.S. spies had used UNSCOM, a purportedly neutral U.N. commission, to collect lethal targeting intelligence about Saddam while masquerading as independent inspectors. It was a shocking charge--as if Girl Scouts peddling cookies were also casing your house for a burglary--and American officials were quick to shoot back. We may have spied, they said...
...UNSCOM was set up in 1991 as part of the truce agreement to end the Gulf War. It had a simple mission: to verify the destruction of Saddam's remaining missile, chemical- and biological-weapons capability. But U.N. inspectors quickly hit a wall: Saddam had no intention of cooperating with their inspections. So, eager to do their jobs, they turned from monitoring to spying to uncover his hidden caches. In interviews with key intelligence and military officials, TIME has pieced together that slow slide into espionage--one that peaked last March when a specially trained operative from the Pentagon...
...Thursday endorsed France's call to lift limits on Iraq's oil-for-food sales, but it remains opposed to the proposed replacing of UNSCOM with a financial monitoring system. Dowell points out that even the existing oil-sales limit amounts to more oil than Baghdad is currently able to produce. "It won't mean much unless Iraq can import machinery to upgrade its oil production, which is forbidden under current sanctions," says Dowell. While France believes sanctions are ineffective and exacting a brutal toll on the Iraqi people, Washington sees them as essential to contain Saddam. "But without...
...heavyweights in a clinch, but there's no ref to pull them apart and tell them to fight on. U.S. planes Wednesday attacked an Iraqi missile site for the third time in a week, but no progress was expected from a U.N. Security Council consultation over the future of UNSCOM. "Everyone's waiting for Washington to send a signal on how it wants to proceed after the bombing, but we haven't done that," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. "The Security Council is split over sanctions and the future of UNSCOM, but diplomats at the U.N. also believe that...
...Wednesday's U.N. session won't get beyond the airing of differences: France and Russia proposing that UNSCOM be scrapped and sanctions ended, and the U.S. insisting on maintaining the status quo. Which means that for the foreseeable future, Iraq's air-defense units would be advised to keep their heads down...