US faces allegations of spying
Oliver Martin

After the 1991 Gulf War, The United Nations (UN) set out on a mandate to disarm Iraq of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Long suspected of having well-funded non-conventional weapons programs, Iraq was percieved as a potential hazard by the UN.

With a portion of their military in ruins after the US lead-bombing campaigns in 1991, hard evidence surfaced that Saddam Hussein was using enormous portions of the nation's oil revenues to research and develop weapons of mass destruction. In the hands of Hussein, these weapons had the potential to further destabilize the Middle East.

The UN, through resolution after resolution, formed UNSCom, (United Nations Security Commission). The mandate of this committee was to investigate Iraq's weapons programs and facilitate their destruction. The compliance of Iraq was ensured through the threat of further US military action and majority UN approval by its members.

The formation of UNSCOM would consist of a multinational collection of industrial and scientific experts. They would be based in Iraq and have the logistical support, the same as a traditional UN peacekeeping mission. UNSCOM was originally expected to operate for a few months, but its mandate has been prolonged several times. Most of its 120 staff have been on loan from several countries.

Earlier in UNSCOM's mandate, Richard Butler, the chief inspector was asked by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to allow for the go-ahead to plant radio monitoring equipment in Iraq. The NSA said the equipment was to monitor Iraqi military communications with the purpose of finding out the secrets about the weapons programs. Butler, an American, allowed for the monitoring and considered the matter ended.

Last week, an unnamed source at the US State Department leaked information to the Wall Street Journal, quoting that the radio transmissions were being used for clandestine purposes.

Originally the NSA monitoring devices were put in place to aid the inspectors in finding suspected weapons plants. The US official said that only selected information was sent back to UNSCOM inspectors, and the majority of the radio transmissions were used for US military purposes. The UN was now faced with a damaging situation which could potentially ruin its impartial stance.

The media frenzy on the spy allegations heated up by weeks end, when reports in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe cited that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was "outraged" by US spying activity in Iraq under the UN flag. The papers painted a damaging view of Annan, in his condemnation of the US operations. By Friday the situation seemed that a major confrontation was going to happen between the UN Secretary General's office and the US State Department.

Finally on Friday night, a spokesman for Annan said the Secretary-General was "embarrassed by the US newspaper reports, and he hoped that as we get focused on real issues, whatever ill feeling has been generated will dissipate and a good working relationship will continue."

It became visibly obvious the UN was attempting to diffuse the situation, while keeping in good working relations with the US. Left unclear was to what extent Annan was concerned about the substance of the allegations rather than their potential effect on relations with the US.

Was the UN Secretary General playing into US hands, a government who was his chief backer when he won the UN's top post two years ago?

When presented with this argument, UN inspection officials said no. They said that it remained uncertain whether the US had obtained military information through the UN channels and was hiding it. Ron Cleminson, a Canadian weapons-verification expert who is one of the 22 members of the UNSCOM inspection team supported this belief. He said the US, which has a bristling apparatus of its own to collect all manners of intelligence would not need the UNSCOM transmissions.

"My guesstimate is that somebody sitting in the middle of Baghdad really wouldn't help on something like that," Cleminson said. "They would be monitoring for their own purposes - if in fact they do - the entire country. Satellites would be 100% more useful."

Early this week, two US newspapers following the spy scandal reported that US spies tracked the Iraqi President's movements while working under the cover of UN weapons-inspection teams. The New York Times quoted unnamed Clinton administration officials as saying US spies had undertaken independent missions while seconded to UNSCOM.

Regardless of the accuracy of the US spying allegations, the UN has now been placed in a very compromising situation. The revelations have lent considerable weight to a claim Saddam has often repeated; that UNSCOM is a cover for Western spy activity.

With further allegations surfacing, and the attempt by the UN Secretary General to preserve his relations with the US, the UN is in hot water. In the first place why was the UN conducting intelligence operations in the dark? The UN only allowed the NSA to operate in Iraq, while the French and British, strong coalition members during the 1991 Gulf War were not privy to the radio transmissions.

Second, why was the NSA activity not monitored by an independent UN team? It seems naive of the UN to blindly allow the US to originally control the monitoring devices, considering their bias against the Iraqi President.

With no visable end in sight for Annan, more fuel has been added to the hazardous Iraq issue. Since the beginning of 1998, Saddam threatened the expulsion of the UN weapons inspectors. The Security Council fought back with various resolutions calling for Iraqi compliance.

The only message Saddam put through was last minute bargaining with the threat of airstrikes at the eleventh hour. In the end the UN's impartial stance was trusted. Now even that cannot be counted on.