UN Studying Iraqi Letter on Weapons Inspections

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 20, 2002

UN Studying Iraqi Letter on Weapons Inspections

A new letter sent Friday by the Iraqi government in regard to weapons inspections has been under study by the United Nations, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday.

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A new letter sent Friday by the Iraqi government in regard to weapons inspections has been under study by the United Nations, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday.

"The six-page letter from Iraqi foreign Minister Naji Sabri, which also includes a three-page annex, was distributed to (Security) Council members on Saturday," Eckhard told reporters in New York. The letter was also transmitted to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who is vacationing in his native Ghana.

Eckhard said the council is expected to take up the matter, butno date has yet been set to do so. The United States holds this month's council presidency.

The Iraqi letter includes a reply to an Aug. 5 letter from Annan who looked forward to receiving from the Iraqi government a formal invitation to the UN weapons inspectors.

"We repeat our offer for a round of technical talks to evaluatethe previous phase (of inspections) and discuss a method of dealing with unfulfilled issues at the time of the voluntary departure of inspectors in the end of 1998," said Sabri in his letter on Friday.

Annan's team is studying the text and has no further comment onit at this time, according to Eckhard, who suggested that the Security Council may not wait for Annan's return to New York before reacting to the Iraqi offer.

Three rounds of talks earlier this year made little progress toward the UN goal of getting inspectors back to verify whether Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction, as demanded by the UN council.

The inspections are key to suspending UN sanctions against Iraq,imposed after Iraq's invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990.

The weapons experts, who went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf Warthat drove Iraq out of Kuwait, spent seven years inspecting and destroying Iraq's dangerous weapons before departing Baghdad in December 1998 on the eve of a US-British bombing raid.

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