End of an era for UN's Iraq inspectors

By Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, BBC News

Modern art? Inspector Smidovich with an Iraqi Scud missile engine

There are not many offices in mid-town Manhattan where the first thing that catches your eye as you step through the door is the engine of an Iraqi Scud missile.

But this isn't any office - it is the home of Unmovic, the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.

Or, rather, the former UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.

They are packing up and preparing to disappear after their mandate was terminated by the UN Security Council earlier this year.

Working out what to do with the enormous archive of material is not proving easy.

"It's not something we can put out in the trash," jokes Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for Unmovic, as he looks at the Scud engine, suggesting that it might end up as a piece of modern art in a UN corridor somewhere.

Weapons cookbooks

In another room is a stack of original blueprints famously found in a chicken farm in the mid-1990s. One set provided specifications for the warheads of Iraq's missiles.

In another room is a stack of videos and tapes of inspections dating back to right after the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was first forced to allow in the inspectors.

The material is dated, but could still pose a danger

On another table, an inspector unfurls a set of spy plane photographs of Iraqi facilities provided to Unscom, Unmovic's predecessor.

Some of the most sensitive items though are the so-called "cookbooks", which detail how to make various chemical and biological warfare agents, including how to multiply and weaponise anthrax as well as manufacture the nerve agent VX and other weapons the Iraqis developed (and in some cases in the late 1980s, used).

Finding a secure home for all the material where it can be accessed but will not be pilfered by potential terrorists has not been easy.

A few months ago, there was an unusual surprise as the filing cabinets were emptied.

A plastic bag was found holding some glass vials containing a liquid.

Records showed that the material had come from the inspection of an Iraqi chemical weapons plant, and an inventory identified one of the substances as phosgene, a World War I vintage chemical weapon.

The police, FBI and others had to be called and the streets blocked off as the substance was sent off to a US Army lab for testing.

It turned out to be harmless, but New York newspaper headline writers had their fun - "WMD Found - at the UN", ran one.

Political pressures

In the early 1990s Unscom discovered significant chemical and biological programmes that Iraq had hidden as well as banned work on missiles.

The inspectors' findings were sometimes put to political purposes

But as the 1990s progressed, Unscom's reports became increasingly politicised as the US and UK sought to put pressure on Saddam Hussein based on its reports, something many resented.

Soon after Unmovic was created in the late 1990s as a successor organisation, the pressure intensified even further as the US and UK made the case for war based on Iraq having resumed active weapons programmes, something which Unmovic said it did not have sufficient evidence to back up.

Since the invasion of 2003, Unmovic has continued to monitor Iraq through satellite imagery but has not been present on the ground.

The US and Britain pressed for Unmovic to be shut down earlier in the year, partly out of pressure from the new Iraqi government which wanted the issue closed and partly, many believe, out of a desire to put the whole, difficult chapter of Iraq's WMD behind them.

Unmovic was an unfortunate reminder of what they had got wrong.

Expertise

Some veterans like Nikita Smidovich, head of training, have been working on the issue since the very start in 1991.

And for the many who have worked at Unscom and Unmovic there is a mixture of nostalgia and sadness as the end approaches, particularly because they believe that some relevant and useful skills may well be lost.

The organisations had built up a unique roster of expert inspectors from 63 countries who knew how to look for signs of chemical, biological and missile programmes and what might indicate the resurgence of previously closed programmes.

Some of the databases were especially important in tracking procurement patterns for dual-use items in order to try to understand if Iraq was covertly trying to buy items for a programme.

There was some talk of trying to institutionalise the knowledge and skills that had been acquired - particularly with issues over Iran and North Korea so hotly debated at the UN and elsewhere.

Mistakes

But the Security Council became bogged down in the details of how to take an organisation with a very specific mandate dealing with one country (and funded by Iraq's oil revenues during its entire existence) and creating something broader and more permanent.

The primary legacy of a decade and a half of inspections will be in the form of a 1,500-page compendium on Iraq's programmes with a particular focus on the mistakes made and lessons learned by the inspectors.

"We will be remembered as having been a group that was independent and doing a competent, professional job without favour or fear from any outside influence," says Ewen Buchanan.

Unscom and Unmovic will also, no doubt, be remembered as a group which sat at the centre of the storm for many turbulent years.