United Nations and Iraq
On February 5th 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, presented part of the US' information on Iraq's non-compliance with Security Council resolution 1441. After Powell's presentaion, 14 mostly foreign ministers of the representatives on the Security Council then read their countries position of the Iraq inspection process. What's wrong with this picture?
First of all, the responses of the foreign ministers was written by their respective governments BEFORE the evidence provided by Colin Powell was known. Exactly what is the point in having all 14 foreign ministers speak after the presentation if they were not prepared to comment ON the presentation? The Iraqi foreign minister was obvioulsy prepared to comment as he would just have to deny whatever had been said in the presentation.
One other interesting item was that the US was unable to present information provided by foreign governments unless the foreign government agreed to let the US mention it. Two of the governments that refused to let the US use information they had given the US were France and Germany.
A more common sense approach would have been to allow Colin Powell to present US evidence of Iraqi hiding WMD from the inspectors and then wanting a day or two before having the foreign ministers provide their governments response to the information presentated. But unfortunately, common sense is a commodity in limited supply in this world.
02/07/03 ( 317 )
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