Iraq statement: Excerpts

Anger over who had access to the dossier

Iraq on Tuesday angrily criticised the United States for intervening in the distribution of its weapons declaration to the United Nations. The following are excerpts of an Iraqi Foreign Ministry statement read out on Iraqi satellite television.

The United States of America on Monday, 9 January 2002 carried out an unprecedented blackmail operation in UN history.

The United States forced the UN Security Council [UNSC] president to hand over the original copy of Iraq's declaration addressed to the UN Security Council president in violation of the agreement that the UN Security Council in its plenary session reached on 6 December 2002.

This US behaviour disparages the UN Charter, the authority of the UNSC and the United Nations

The agreement says that the declaration should be kept with the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Committee [Unmovic] and the IAEA to have their experts first study the declaration in accordance with the international agreements on disarmament and nonproliferation.

After receiving the copy, the United States said that it would make four copies to hand over to the other permanent UNSC members and would not present full copies to the 10 non-permanent UNSC members.

This US behaviour disparages the UN Charter, the authority of the UNSC and the United Nations, as well as the inalienable rights of the elected 10 UNSC members. This behaviour casts doubt on the commitments of the UNSC non-permanent members.

Such US behaviour aims at tampering with the UN documents to provide covers for the aggression against Iraq

The action violates Paragraph 3 of the UNSC Resolution 1441/2002, which was drafted by the United States and imposed on the council. In addition to all this, such US behaviour aims at tampering with the UN documents to provide covers for the aggression against Iraq, especially after the facts about the US allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction became known to the whole world.

The foreign minister of the Republic of Iraq addressed the Iraqi declaration to the UNSC president through the Unmovic and the IAEA.

In his letter, the foreign minister warned against publishing the declarations because some of the information they contain would have some repercussions and such action would conflict with the nonproliferation regulations.

Unmovic and the IAEA should have studied these declarations to decide the parts that are not publishable and to inform all UNSC members on their conclusions so that the council as a whole can decide what can be and what cannot be published.

A single country, that is the United States, should not override the role of UNMOVIC and the IAEA and the authority of the UNSC president and the council's other four permanent members, which were forced to wait to be supplied by it [the United States] with copies of the Iraqi declaration after the United States studied its contents first.

There is a possibility that it may distort whatever it wants in this declaration.

It violated the authority of the 10 non-permanent members, who represent the UN member states and who, according to the UN Charter, are supposed to enjoy the same rights and duties enjoyed by the council's permanent members, except for the veto right.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.