The chief UN arms inspector, Mr Richard Butler, concluded hat Iraq failed to restore full co-operation with his weapons experts. "Iraq's conduct ensured that no progress was able to be made in either the fields of disarmament or account for its prohibited weapons programmes," he said in a report to the UN Secretary-General, Dr Kofi Annan, and the Security Council.
Mr Butler said Baghdad had set back his work by issuing new restrictions since inspectors resumed their duties in mid-November. He said Iraq's lack of full co-operation made it impossible for inspectors to determine if Baghdad had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction, a key requirement for lifting UN sanctions imposed in August 1990, after Iraq's troops invaded Kuwait.
Iraq had limited inspections on August 5th, and then curtailed them on October 31st. However, it allowed them to resume on November 14th under the threat of US-British air strikes.
In contrast to Mr Butler's report, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in charge of nuclear disarmament, said Iraq had provided "the necessary level of co-operation" to its inspectors. It said it had only a few remaining questions relating to its past atomic programme.
Consequently, in a letter to the Security Council, Mr Annan suggested three options on the comprehensive review: the council could delay it; could give Iraq additional time to co-operate; could proceed anyway on the basis "that it is sufficiently important to know precisely what has been achieved in the area of disarmament over the entire period since 1991".
In his report, Mr Butler said "Iraq did not provide the full co-operation it promised on November 14th, 1998", the date it had announced it would resume co-operation with the inspectors. In fact, he said, "Iraq initiated new forms of restrictions upon the commission's work" which might also hinder long-term monitoring of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction.
"Finally, in the light of this experience, that is, the absence of full co-operation by Iraq, it must regrettably be recorded again that the commission is not able to conduct the substantive disarmament work mandated to it by the Security Council and, thus, to give the council the assurances it requires with respect to Iraq's prohibited weapons programmes."
Baghdad did allow a number of inspections but halted several searches and turned over only one of the 12 weapons-related documents Mr Butler requested.
Mr Butler said the one set of documents received, 64 pages concerning missiles, indicated they did not contain the information sought by UNSCOM. Iraq has maintained that the documents either do not exist, could not be found or were not relevant to UNSCOM's work.