Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz
'This is an endless game'
On Aug. 3, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz met in
Baghdad with UNSCOM head Richard Butler. Aziz made a strong
appeal for an end to the sanctions that have caused the deaths
of over a million Iraqis. The meeting was videotaped and
broadcast by Iraqi television-which outraged Butler. He then
left the country and declared that Iraq had torpedoed the
talks. Below are some brief excerpts from that meeting
transcribed from the videotape by Sarah Sloan of the
International Action Center. Both men spoke in English. We have
given Aziz more space than Butler because the position of the
Iraqi government is generally ignored or distorted by the U.S.
media. In this excerpt, Aziz is talking about UNSCOM's endless
demands for "verification" that Iraq has eliminated all its
"weapons of mass destruction."
TARIQ AZIZ: The best evidence for destruction [of weapons]
is the dead weapon. There it is-the engine is dead, that's
enough for the verification for disarmament. When that engine
was destroyed-on the 9th of July or on the
12th of July, was it destroyed in the morning or in
the evening-is not important. How it was brought from the
storage-by a car or by another vehicle-that's not the main
issue. The main issue is whether it is destroyed or not.
There it is in your hands. Verify that it has been
destroyed. And I know very well-and this is the experience of
seven years-those questions of why and when and how and who,
are used in order to perpetuate the situation, to prolong it
endlessly. ...
You always speak about documentation, as if we haven't
provided any documents to you. We have provided hundreds of
thousands of documents to UNSCOM in each and every issue, in
each and every file, in each and every detailed issue.
The documents which were available in Iraq-which we
succeeded in collecting from the institutions, from the
individuals concerned-we presented to UNSCOM, and you are still
asking about documentation. Documentation on what? On the
missiles? The missiles are destroyed. The engines are
destroyed. The launchers are destroyed. The warheads are
destroyed. And so on and so forth. What more documentation are
you asking for?
This is also an endless game. You always tell the Security
Council and the international public: we need Iraq to provide
further information and documenta tion. And you make it as a
basic requirement for writing up your work. This could be done
for a century without an end. ...
What have you been making verification on for seven years?
We haven't mentioned anything to you [that you haven't]
followed that with verification-inspection teams, interviews,
visits, discussions; tens, hundreds of them. They were all to
verify Iraq's declarations and still you need to verify,
verify, verify.
Whatever we tell you:
"This is a cup of tea." "Yes, it looks like a cup of tea,
but we are going to verify it."
"This is a spoon." "Yes it looks like a spoon, but we are
going to verify it. ..."
The main fact, the major fact which you are deliberately not
telling the world, not telling the Security Council, is that
Iraq is free of first-strike weapons. Iraq is 100 percent free
of first-strike weapons.
You haven't altered this fact. You are still making
speculations. You are still placing suspicions but you have not
provided to the Security Council and to the world any evidence,
any physical or material evidence, to the contrary. For seven
years.
Seven years you have been working in this
country-inspections, intrusions, spying, and all the other
activities of UNSCOM-and you haven't found a weapon after the
destruction that took place in 1991 and some early time in
1992. And still you are searching, you are verifying. ...
Secondly, you have an overwhelming, comprehensive, rigid,
intrusive monitoring system which has been working for four
years. You have not detected any major violation of Iraq's
obligations under [Security Council resolutions] 687 and 715
and you know very well that Iraq cannot produce, reproduce any
of those weapons, first-strike weapons, without being detected
by the monitoring system in Iraq. ...
UNSCOM is not impartial. UNSCOM is being influenced by the
Americans and the British, and used by the Americans and the
British. UNSCOM officials have been deliberately prolonging the
work of UNSCOM. ...
RICHARD BUTLER: I came to these talks on the assumption that
we were here to do serious work and, notwithstanding the
theater to which we've just been exposed, I continue to make
that assumption.
TA: This is very serious, very serious, Mr. Butler. This
work is very serious to Iraq because it means death and it
means suffering to my people. Therefore, it is serious and what
we presented is not theatrical.
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