[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 142 (Saturday, October 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12286-S12288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, there are two subjects that I wish to bring 
to my colleagues' attention this afternoon. First, I want to talk about 
an issue of enormous international consequence--the situation with 
respect to Iraq. For the last 2 months, as we know, Saddam Hussein has 
been testing, yet again, the full measure of the international 
community's resolve to force Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass 
destruction. That has been the fundamental goal of our policy toward 
Iraq since the end of the gulf war and is reflected in the U.N. 
agreements reached in the aftermath of the war.
  Two months ago, on August 5, Saddam Hussein, formally adopting a 
recommendation that had been made by the Iraqi parliament 2 days 
earlier, announced that Iraq would no longer permit U.N. weapons 
inspectors to conduct random searches in defiance of its obligations 
under those U.N. resolutions that were adopted at the end of the war, 
and also in violation, I might add, of its agreement last February with 
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to give UNSCOM teams, accompanied by 
diplomatic overseers, unconditional access to all sites where UNSCOM 
believed that Iraq may be stockpiling weapons or agents to make those 
weapons.
  Let's understand very clearly that ever since the end of the war, it 
has been the clear, declared, accepted, and implemented policy of the 
United States of America and its allies to prevent Saddam Hussein from 
building weapons of mass destruction. And as part of that agreed-upon 
policy, we were to be permitted unlimited, unfettered, unconditional, 
immediate access to the sites that we needed to inspect in order to be 
able to make that policy real.
  Iraq's defiance and the low-key--some would say weak--response of the 
United States and the United Nations initially went unnoticed, in part 
because of other events, including the dual bombings of our embassies 
in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the obvious fascination with domestic 
events that have dominated the headlines now for so many months. Those 
events, frankly, have continued to obscure the reality of what is 
happening in Iraq; and, accordingly, the reality of the potential 
threat to the region--a region where, obviously, the United States, for 
50 years or more, has invested enormous amounts of our diplomatic and 
even our domestic energy.
  Press reports of the administration's efforts to intervene in, or at 
minimum, to influence UNSCOM's inspection process and the resignation 
of American UNSCOM inspector, Scott Ritter, focused the spotlight 
briefly on our Iraqi policy and raised some serious and troubling 
questions about our efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction. The principal question raised was a very simple one: Are 
those efforts still intact, or has our policy changed?
  Last month, press reports suggested that administration officials had 
secretly tried to quash aggressive U.N. inspections at various times 
over the last year, most recently in August, in order to avoid a 
confrontation with Iraq--this despite repeatedly demanding the 
unconditional, unfettered accesses that I referred to earlier for the 
inspection teams. Scott Ritter, the longest serving American inspector 
in UNSCOM, charged at the time that the administration had intervened 
at least six or seven times since last November when Iraq tried to 
thwart UNSCOM's work by refusing to allow Ritter and other Americans to 
participate on the teams, in an effort to delay or postpone or cancel 
certain UNSCOM operations out of fear of confrontation with Iraq.
  Those were serious charges. We held an open hearing, a joint hearing 
between the Armed Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on 
these charges. There were some protestations to the contrary by the 
administration and a subsequent effort to ensure that the Security 
Council would maintain the sanctions against Iraq, but, frankly, 
nothing more.
  In explaining his reasons for resigning, Scott Ritter stated that the 
policy shift in the Security Council supported ``at least implicitly'' 
by the United States, away from an aggressive inspections policy is a 
surrender to Iraqi leadership that makes a ``farce'' of the 
commission's efforts to prove that Iraq is still concealing its 
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.
  Administration officials have categorically rejected the notion that 
U.S. policy has shifted, either in terms of our willingness to use 
force or support for UNSCOM. They have also disputed Ritter's charges 
of repeated U.S. efforts to limit UNSCOM's work. Writing in the New 
York Times on August 17, Secretary Albright stated that the 
administration has ``ruled nothing out, including the use of force'' in 
determining how to respond to Iraqi actions, and that supporting UNSCOM 
is ``at the heart of U.S. efforts to prevent Saddam Hussein from 
threatening his neighborhood.'' While acknowledging that she did 
consult with UNSCOM's Chairman, Richard Butler, after Iraq suspended 
inspections last month, she argued that he ``came to his own conclusion 
that it was wiser to keep the focus on Iraq's open defiance of the 
Security Council.'' Attempting to proceed with the inspections, in her 
view, would have ``allowed some in the Security Council to muddy the 
waters by claiming again that UNSCOM had provoked Iraq,'' whereas, not 
proceeding would give us a ``free hand to use other means'' if Iraq 
does not ``resume cooperation'' with the Security Council. At that 
time, she also stressed the importance of maintaining the comprehensive 
sanctions in place to deny Saddam Hussein the ability to rearm Iraq and 
thus threaten his neighbors.
  I appreciate the Secretary's efforts to set the record straight. But, 
Mr. President, I have to say, in all candor, that

[[Page S12287]]

I don't think that her op-ed or subsequent statements by the 
administration have put to rest legitimate questions --legitimate 
questions or concerns about what our policy is and where it is headed--
not just our policy alone, I might add, but the policy of the United 
Nations itself, and the policy of our allies in Europe.

  The fact of the matter is, in my judgment, the U.S. response and that 
of the Security Council to Saddam Hussein's latest provocations are 
different in tone and substance from responses to earlier Iraqi 
provocations.
  Three times in the last 11 months Saddam Hussein has launched 
increasingly bolder challenges to UNSCOM's authority and work. In 
November, he refused to allow American inspectors to participate on the 
teams. Although that crisis ultimately was resolved through Russian 
intervention, the United States and Britain were leading the effort to 
push the Security Council to respond strongly. In subsequent weeks, 
Saddam Hussein refused to grant UNSCOM access to Presidential palaces 
and other sensitive cites, kicked out the team that was led by Scott 
Ritter, charging at the time that he was a CIA spy, and threatened to 
expel all inspectors unless sanctions were removed by mid-May.
  By February, the United States had an armada of forces positioned in 
the gulf, and administration officials from our President on down had 
declared our intention to use military force if necessary to reduce 
Iraq's capacity to manufacture, stockpile or reconstitute its weapons 
of mass destruction, or to threaten its neighbors.
  Ultimately diplomacy succeeded again. In a sense, it succeeded again. 
It averted the immediate crisis. One can certainly raise serious 
questions about how effective it was with respect to the longer-term 
choices we face. But certainly in the short term, Secretary General 
Kofi Annan successfully struck an agreement with Iraq to provide UNSCOM 
inspectors, accompanied by diplomatic representatives, full and 
unfettered access to all sites. There is little doubt that this 
agreement would not have been concluded successfully without the 
Security Council's strong calls for Iraqi compliance combined with the 
specter of the potential use of American force.
  Saddam's latest provocation, however, Mr. President, strikes at the 
heart of our policy, and at the capacity of UNSCOM to do its job 
effectively. As long as the U.N. inspectors are prevented, as they are, 
from undertaking random no-notice inspections, they will never be able 
to confirm the fundamentals of our policy. They will never be able to 
confirm what weapons Iraq still has or what it is doing to maintain its 
capability to produce weapons of mass destruction.
  Yet, when confronted with what may be the most serious challenge to 
UNSCOM to date, the administration's response, and that of our allies 
and the United Nations, has been to assiduously avoid brandishing the 
sword and to make a concerted effort to downplay the offense to avoid 
confrontation at all costs, even if it means implicit and even explicit 
backing down on our stated position as well as that of the Security 
Council. That stated position is clear: That Iraq must provide the U.N. 
inspectors with unconditional and unfettered access to all sites.
  Secretary Albright may well be correct in arguing that this course 
helps keep the focus on Iraq's defiance. It may well do that. But it is 
also true that the U.N.-imposed limits on UNSCOM operations, especially 
if they are at the behest of the United States, work completely to 
Saddam Hussein's advantage.
  They raise questions of the most serious nature about the 
preparedness of the international community to keep its own commitment 
to force Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and the much 
larger question of our overall proliferation commitment itself. They 
undermine the credibility of the United States and the United Nations 
position that Iraq comply with the Security Council's demands to 
provide unconditional and unfettered access to those inspectors. And, 
obviously, every single one of our colleagues ought to be deeply 
concerned about the fact that by keeping the inspectors out of the very 
places that Saddam Hussein wants to prevent them from entering, they 
substantially weaken UNSCOM's ability to make any accurate 
determination of Iraq's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons 
inventory or capability. And in so doing, they open the door for Iraq's 
allies on the Security Council to waffle on the question of sanctions.
  I recognize that the Security Council recently voted to keep the 
sanctions in place and to suspend the sanctions review process. But, 
Mr. President, notwithstanding that, the less than maximum level of 
international concern and focus on the underlying fact that no 
inspections take place, the continuation of Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction program, and the fact that Saddam Hussein is in complete 
contravention of his own agreements and of the U.N. requirements--that 
continues to be the real crisis. And Saddam Hussein continues to refuse 
to comply.
  Since the end of the gulf war, the international community has sought 
to isolate and weaken Iraq through a dual policy of sanctions and 
weapons inspections. Or, as one administration official said, to put 
him in a ``box.'' In order to get the sanctions relief, Iraq has to 
eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and submit to inspections. 
But it has become painfully apparent over the last 11 months that there 
are deep divisions within the Security Council particularly among the 
Permanent 5 members over how to deal with Saddam Hussein's aggressive 
efforts to break out of the box.
  Russia, France and China have consistently been more sympathetic to 
Iraq's call for sanctions relief than the United States and Britain. 
We, on the other hand, have steadfastly insisted that sanctions remain 
in place until he complies. These differences over how to deal with 
Iraq reflect the fact that there is a superficial consensus, at best, 
among the Perm 5 on the degree to which Iraq poses a threat and the 
priority to be placed on dismantling Iraq's weapons capability. For the 
United States and Britain, an Iraq equipped with nuclear, chemical or 
biological weapons under the leadership of Saddam Hussein is a threat 
that almost goes without description, although our current activities 
seem to call into question whether or not one needs to be reminded of 
some of that description. Both of these countries have demonstrated a 
willingness to expend men, material and money to curb that threat.
  France, on the other hand, has long established economic and 
political relationships within the Arab world, and has had a different 
approach. Russia also has a working relationship with Iraq, and China, 
whose commitment to nuclear nonproliferation has been less than 
stellar, has a very different calculus that comes into play. Iraq may 
be a threat and nonproliferation may be the obvious, most desirable 
goal, but whether any of these countries are legitimately prepared to 
sacrifice other interests to bring Iraq to heel remains questionable 
today, and is precisely part of the calculus that Saddam Hussein has 
used as he tweaks the Security Council and the international community 
simultaneously.
  Given the difference of views within the Security Council, and no 
doubt the fears of our Arab allies, who are the potential targets of 
Iraqi aggression, it is really not surprising, or shouldn't be to any 
of us, that the administration has privately tried to influence the 
inspection process in a way that might avoid confrontation while other 
efforts were being made to forge a consensus. But now we have to make a 
judgment about the failure to reinstate the inspection process and ask 
ourselves whether or not that will destroy the original ``box'' that 
the administration has defined as so essential to carrying out our 
policy.
  Is it possible that there is a sufficient lack of consensus and a 
lack of will that will permit Saddam Hussein to exploit the differences 
among the members of the Security Council and to create a sufficient 
level of sanctions fatigue that we would in fact move further away from 
the policy we originally had?
  To the extent that his efforts are successful, we will find ourselves 
increasingly isolated within the Security Council. In fact, it is 
already clear that some of our allies in the Security Council are very 
open to the Iraqi idea of a comprehensive review of its performance in 
dismantling all of its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons--a 
review which Iraq hopes will

[[Page S12288]]

lead to a lifting of some if not all of the sanctions.
  I think the question needs to be asked as to how long we can sustain 
our insistence on the maintenance of sanctions if support for sanctions 
continues to erode within the Security Council. If it is indeed true 
that support is eroding--and there are great indicators that, given the 
current lack of confrontation, it is true--then the question remains, 
How will our original policy be affected or in fact is our original 
policy still in place?
  In April, Secretary Albright stated that, ``It took a threat of force 
to persuade Saddam Hussein to let the U.N. inspectors back in. We must 
maintain that threat if the inspectors are to do their jobs.''
  That was the policy in April. Whether the administration is still 
prepared to use force to compel Iraqi compliance is now an enormous 
question. The Secretary says it is, but the recent revelations raise 
questions about that.
  In addition, it seems to me that there are clear questions about 
whether or not the international community at this point in time is as 
committed as it was previously to the question of keeping Iraq from 
developing that capacity to rob its neighbors of tranquility through 
its unilateral development of a secret weapon program.
  In May, India and Pakistan, despite all of our exhortations, 
conducted nuclear tests. In August, U.S. intelligence reports indicated 
that North Korea is building a secret underground nuclear facility, and 
last month North Korea tested a new 1,250-mile-range ballistic missile 
which landed in the Sea of Japan. Each and every one of these events 
raises the ante on international proliferation efforts and should cause 
the Senate and the Congress as a whole and the administration, in my 
judgment, to place far greater emphasis and energy on this subject.
  If the United States and the United Nations retreat in any way on 
Iraq, if we are prepared to accept something less than their full 
compliance with the international inspection requirement that has been 
in place now for 7 years, it will be difficult to understand how we 
will have advanced the cause of proliferation in any of those other 
areas that I just mentioned.
  Mr. President, over the years, a consensus has developed within the 
international community that the production and use of weapons of mass 
destruction has to be halted. We and others worked hard to develop arms 
control regimes toward that end, but obviously Saddam Hussein's goal is 
to do otherwise. Iraq and North Korea and others have made it clear 
that they are still trying, secretly and otherwise, to develop those 
weapons.
  The international consensus on the need to curb the production and 
use of weapons of mass destruction is widespread, but it is far from 
unanimous, and, as the divisions within the Security Council over Iraq 
indicate, some of our key allies simply don't place the same priority 
on proliferation as we do.
  The proliferation of weapons, be they conventional or of mass 
destruction, remains one of the most significant issues on the 
international agenda. Obviously, solutions won't come easily. But I am 
convinced that in the case of Iraq, our failure would set the 
international community's nonproliferations efforts back enormously.
  Our allies need to understand that the ramifications of letting 
Saddam Hussein out of the box that we put him in with respect to 
inspections would be serious and far-reaching. So I believe we need to 
keep the pressure on them to stand firm, to stand firm with us, and 
unless we reassert our leadership and insist that Iraq allow those 
inspectors to do their job, we will have destroyed a number of years of 
our effort in ways, Mr. President, that we will regret in our policy 
for the long haul.
  I would point out also that there are experts on Iraq, those in the 
inspections team, those at the U.N. and elsewhere in our international 
community, who are very clear that Saddam Hussein's first objective is 
not to lift the sanctions. His first objective is to keep Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction program--that will come ahead of all else.
  The situation is really far more serious than the United Nations, the 
Congress or the administration have made clear to the American people 
or demonstrated through the level of diplomacy and focus that is 
currently being placed on this issue. It is not simply about 
eliminating Saddam Hussein's capacity to threaten his neighbors. It is 
about eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--chemical, 
biological, and nuclear. Failure to achieve this goal will have a 
profound impact, I believe, on our efforts with respect to our other 
nonproliferation efforts including completion of our talks with Russia 
and the ultimate ratification of the START II treaty by the Duma.
  In recent conversations that I had with Chairman Butler, he confirmed 
that Saddam Hussein has only this one goal--keeping his weapons of mass 
destruction capability--and he further stated with clarity that Iraq is 
well out of compliance with U.N. resolutions requiring it to eliminate 
those weapons and submit to inspections and out of compliance with the 
agreement that he signed up to in February with Kofi Annan.
  Mr. President, I believe there are a number of things we could do, a 
number of things both in covert as well as overt fashion. There is more 
policy energy that ought to be placed on this effort, and I believe 
that, as I have set forth in my comments, it is critical for us to 
engage in that effort, to hold him accountable.
  In February, when we had an armada positioned in the gulf, President 
Clinton said that ``one way or the other, we are determined to deny 
Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the 
missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.''
  The fact is, Mr. President, over these last months there has been 
precious little to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing that capacity 
without the inspectors there and without the unwavering determination 
of the United Nations to hold him accountable. So the question still 
stands, What is our policy and what are we prepared to do about it?
  Mr. President, I had asked to speak also on another topic for a 
moment. I see my colleague from New Mexico is here. Let me ask him what 
his intentions might be now and maybe we can work out an agreement.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am on the list for 20 minutes, and I 
have a 2:30 beginning on the budget process working with the White 
House on some offsets. How much longer did the Senator need?
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, under those circumstances, I know that the 
chairman needs to get to those talks. I was going to speak for a longer 
period of time. What I will do is just proceed for another 5 minutes, 
to summarize my thoughts, if it is agreeable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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