Iraq's weapons programme arouses concern in UN bodies.

The General Assembly on 1 November expressed deep concern that since 1991 Iraq had withheld information from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its nuclear-weapons programme, in violation of its obligations under Security Council resolutions 687 (1991), 707 (1991) and 715 (1991), and stressed the need for Iraq to cooperate fully with the Agency in achieving the complete implementation of the relevant Council resolutions.

The Assembly took that action by adopting resolution 50/9 by a vote of 144 to 1 (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), with 8 abstentions. The text was adopted following the defeat, by a vote of 95 to 8, of an amendment proposed by Iraq, by which the Assembly would have noted that the IAEA report had stated that Iraq's nuclear-weapons programme had been, for all practical purposes, destroyed, removed or rendered harmless.

Under Council resolution 687 (1991), the Director General of the IAEA had been requested to carry out inspections in Iraq to determine the scope and status of its clandestine nuclear-weapons programme and to destroy, remove or render harmless materials and equipment specified in that resolution.

IAEA Director General's report

Introducing its annual report (A/50/360), IAEA Director General Hans Blix said that the Agency had recently received additional information on Iraq's former nuclear-weapons programme. "What can be concluded at this stage is that Iraq's withholding of information, documents and materials clearly constitutes a breach of Iraqi obligations under the Security Council resolutions and that the crash programme was in violation of the safeguards agreement" and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), he said.

The IAEA reported that during 1994 it had carried out five inspections in Iraq and had destroyed, removed and rendered harmless items requiring such action under Council resolutions.

In another report of 14 December (S/1995/1040), Mr. Blix stated that in August 1995 Iraq had given the Agency a number of documents pertaining to its 1990 crash programme to divert highly enriched uranium, contained in research reactor fuel that was subject to IAEA safeguards, for use in its clandestine nuclear-weapons programme.

Those and other documents that Iraq claimed had been concealed on property belonging to the family of General Hussein Kamel (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son-in-law who had defected to Jordan) had been catalogued and transferred to IAEA...