United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
| UNMOVIC | |
|---|---|
| operation area | Iraq |
| German name | United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission |
| English name | United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission |
| Based on UN resolution | 1284 (December 17, 1999) |
| Type of mission | inspection |
| Beginning | November 27, 2002 |
| The End | June 29, 2007 |
| management |
Hans Blix ( Sweden )
(May 1, 2000 - June 30, 2003) Dimitris Perrikos ( Greece ) (from July 1, 2003, officiating) |
The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) means, literally translated, "United Nations Commission for Surveillance, Review and Inspection".
On December 17, 1999, the UN Security Council decided in its resolution 1284 to found UNMOVIC and in March 2000 Hans Blix , who was appointed as its head, began his work. The objective of the new commission was to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) to ensure that Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction. The main focus of Blix's inspection teams should be on the search for biological and chemical weapons, which the IAEA is on the search for nuclear weapons. The creation of a new commission became necessary after the rumor arose in various US media that the forerunner of UNMOVIC, UNSCOM , had been infiltrated by secret service employees from various countries, primarily those of the USA, and had thus lost its neutrality.
During the inspections carried out by UNMOVIC from November 27, 2002, when Iraq agreed to resume weapons inspections, up to March 18, 2003, no weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq. On the other hand, under the supervision of the Commission, around 70 Al-Samoud-2 rockets were destroyed, the range of which exceeded the maximum limit set by the UN Security Council.
However, the governments of the United States, Great Britain and Spain claimed that Iraq did not completely destroy its weapons of mass destruction - as the Iraqi government claims - after the second Gulf War or that it continued the programs to obtain them. Evidence for these allegations has not been produced, and evidence of an allegedly attempted purchase of uranium oxide from Niger, which turned out to be obviously falsified, has been made public. British intelligence released information about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which was obsolete and extracted from an article by a student. The United States established a new department in the Pentagon ( Office of Special Plans ) to obtain relevant information.
Immediately before the coalition troops attacked Iraq, the UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq on March 18, 2003 on the advice of the USA. Without clear authorization from the UN Security Council, the armed forces of the “ Coalition of the Willing ” began the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The third Gulf War broke out .
After the invasion, Hans Blix resigned from his office on June 30, 2003, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed the previous deputy Dimitris Perrikos as his successor .
Even after the invasion, there was intensive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; this search was stopped after the US government had to admit that such weapons apparently did not exist.
In June 2006 UNMOVIC published a 69-page summary of its extensive compendium on the weapons programs in Iraq. The compendium had already been drawn up at that time and was available in five volumes with a total of 1500 pages, but still contained sensitive information, for example on weapons technology or on participating companies and business relationships, the publication of which could have benefited the weapons programs of other countries. On June 27, 2007 UNMOVIC published the revised compendium, a documentation of the knowledge gained over the past years. Following Perrikos' report, the Security Council declared UNMOVIC's mandate ended on June 29, 2007 by resolution 1762 (2007).
Web links
- UNMOVIC: Summary of the compendium of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs in the chemical, biological and missile areas June 2006 (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ^ The principle of the oven pipe zeit.de, October 30, 2003.
- ↑ UNMOVIC: Summary of the compendium of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs in the chemical, biological and missile areas June 2006 (PDF), p. 68.
- ↑ a b Security Council Ends UNMOVIC armscontrol.org, September 2007.