United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War

In March 2003 the United States government announced that "diplomacy has failed" and that it would proceed with a "coalition of the willing" to rid Iraq under Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction the US and UK falsely insisted it possessed. The 2003 invasion of Iraq began a few days later.

Prior to this decision, there had been much diplomacy and debate amongst the members of the United Nations Security Council over how to deal with the situation. This article examines the positions of these states as they changed during 2002–2003.

History

Prior to 2002, the Security Council had passed 16 resolutions on Iraq. In 2002, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441.

In 2003, the governments of the US, Britain, and Spain proposed another resolution on Iraq, which they called the "eighteenth resolution" and others called the "second resolution." This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn when it became clear that several permanent members of the council would cast 'no' votes on any new resolution, thereby vetoing it. Had that occurred, it would have become even more difficult for those wishing to invade Iraq to argue that the council had authorized the subsequent invasion. Regardless of the threatened or likely vetoes, it seems that the coalition at no time was assured any more than four affirmative votes in the Council—the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria—well short of the requirement for nine affirmative votes.

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal." This was challenged by several experts on international law.

Inspections

Following the passage of Resolution 1441, on 8 November 2002, weapons inspectors of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission returned to Iraq for the first time since being withdrawn by the United Nations. Whether Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction or not was being investigated by Hans Blix, head of the commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inspectors remained in the country until they withdrew after being notified of the imminent invasion by the United States, Britain, and two other countries.

In early December 2002, Iraq filed a 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN. After reviewing the document, UN weapons inspectors, the US, France, United Kingdom, and other countries thought that this declaration failed to account for all of Iraq's chemical and biological agents. Many of these countries had supplied the Iraqi regime with the technology to make these weapons in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq War. On December 19, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that Iraq was in "material breach" of the Security Council resolution.

Blix has complained that, to this day, the United States and Britain have not presented him with the evidence that they claim to possess regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Colin Powell's presentation

Selection and preparation

On February 5, 2003, Powell appeared before the UN to prove the urgency to engage a war with Iraq. In 2016, Powell would say, " the time I gave the speech on Feb. 5, the president had already made this decision for military action." Powell was selected to deliver the speech based on his credibility, and Powell stated in 2016 that it had been written by the vice president's office:

The speech supposedly had been prepared in the White House in the NSC ational Security Council But when we were given what had been prepared, it was totally inadequate, and we couldn’t track anything in it. When I asked Condi Rice, the national security advisor, where did this come from, it turns out the vice president’s office had written it.

CIA analyst Nada Bakos has stated that the speech's language differed from what the CIA had prepared for Powell and from the copies that the CIA had received in advance of the presentation.

Content

Powell noted that Iraq harbored a terrorist network headed by al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (in a small region controlled by Ansar al-Islam). Powell also claimed that Iraqis visited Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and provided training to al-Qaeda members, although thousands of Arabs from many countries did the same. US intelligence agencies have found no evidence of any substantive collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Videos included in presentation

File:Iraq-030205-17300pf-shortmirage.webmsd.webm
File:Iraq-030205-17300pf-nerve-gas.webmsd.webm
File:Iraq-030205-17300pf-warhead.webmsd.webm
File:Iraq-030205-17300pf-mod-vehc.webmsd.webm
File:Iraq-030205-17300pf-ammo.webmsd.webm

Reactions

Although the presentation failed to change the fundamental position of the Security Council, including France, Russia, China, and Germany, Powell succeeded in hardening the overall tone of the United Nations towards Iraq. While Colin Powell's statement to the UN may have been accepted as proof by many in the US, this was not the case in Europe.

Powell himself stated later: "I, of course, regret the U.N. speech that I gave, which became the prominent presentation of our case. But we thought it was correct at the time. The President thought it was correct. Congress thought it was correct." "Of course I regret that a lot of it turned out be wrong," he said.

Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson later said that he had inadvertently participated in a hoax on the American people in preparing Powell's erroneous testimony before the United Nations Security Council.

Report of Hans Blix on February 14

UN Chief Inspector Hans Blix, on 14 February 2003, presented a report to the Security Council. Blix gave an update of the situation in Iraq, and he stated that the Iraqis were now more proactive in their cooperation. He also rebutted some of the arguments proposed by Powell. Blix questioned the interpretations of the satellite images put forward by Powell, and stated that alternate interpretations of the satellite images were credible. He also stated that the Iraqis have in fact never received early warning of the inspectors visiting any sites (an allegation made by Powell during his presentation). International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammed ElBaradei also said that he did not believe the Iraqis have a nuclear weapons program, unlike what Powell had claimed.

This report of February 14 and the protests of February 16 appear to have created reluctance in some of the members of the Security Council over the proposed war on Iraq. A second resolution was being drafted with the intention that it would find Iraq in "material breach" and the "serious consequences" of Resolution 1441 should be implemented.

Report of Blix on March 7

On 7 March 2003, Blix made his twelfth quarterly report on the status of UNMOVIC's efforts to verify Iraq's disarmament. A transcript of his presentation is available at CNN.

Invasion

As George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to leave power, the UN pulled out all the inspectors from Iraq. Days later the invasion began.

Positions of Security Council members

* - The US maintained that Iraq was not cooperating with UN inspectors and had not met its obligations to 17 UN resolutions. The US felt that Resolution 1441 called for the immediate, total unilateral disarmament of Iraq and continued to show frustration at the fact that months after the resolution was passed Iraq was still not, in its view, disarming. Language in Resolution 1441 recalled that the use of "all means necessary" was still authorized and in effect from Resolution 678, and therefore maintained that if Iraq failed to comply with the "one final chance to comply" provision of Resolution 1441, then military action would be the result.
* - Within the Security Council, the UK was the primary supporter of the US plan to invade Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly and vigorously supported US policy on Iraq, and portrayed himself as exerting a moderating influence on Bush. British public opinion polls in late January showed that the public support for the war was deteriorating. It had fallen from 50 percent to 30 percent by March.
* - On 20 January 2003, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We think that military intervention would be the worst possible solution," although France believed that Iraq may have had an ongoing chemical and nuclear weapons program. Villepin went on to say that he believed the presence of UN weapons inspectors had frozen Iraq's weapons programs. France also suggested that it would veto any resolution allowing military intervention offered by the US or Britain. The most important French speech during the crisis was made by de Villepin at the Security Council on the 14 February 2003, after Hans Blix presented his detailed report (see below). De Villepin detailed the three major risks of a "premature recourse to the military option", especially the "incalculable consequences for the stability of this scarred and fragile region". He said that "the option of war might seem ''a priori'' to be the swiftest, but let us not forget that having won the war, one has to build peace". He emphasized that "real progress is beginning to be apparent" through the inspections, and that, "given the present state of our research and intelligence, in liaison with our allies", the alleged links between al-Qaeda and the regime in Baghdad explained by Colin Powell were not established. He concluded by referring to the dramatic experience of "old Europe" during World War II. This "impassioned" speech "against war on Iraq, or immediate war on Iraq", won "an unprecedented applause", reported the BBC
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