By Norm Dixon
"Weapons inspectors from the UN Special Commission in Iraq have a serious public relations problem: Hardly anyone — Iraqi or foreigner — has a kind word for them", reported a Baghdad-based correspondent for the Times of India recently. "That the Iraqis have problems with UNSCOM staff is well known. But employees of other UN agencies here are equally critical of them.
"'They roam around like cowboys, as if they own the place', said one observer for the UN's 'oil-for-food' program in northern Iraq. 'They are uncouth and rude.' Another told the Times of India: 'They have no respect for the culture and sensitivity of the people and are deliberately provocative'."
The Times reported that the Australian head of UNSCOM, Richard Butler, was "ticked off" by the UN secretary-general after he told the New York Times that he came from a "western tradition" where "truth-telling was important" and it was "frustrating" to deal with people from places where this was not the case.
The UN has a contradictory role in Iraq — humanitarian assistance and sanctions enforcement — and the two roles have led to clashes, the report said.
"The UNSCOM people see the humanitarian workers as softies keen for sanctions to be eased. They call them 'bunny-huggers'. The latter, in turn, refer to UNSCOM as 'UN-SCUM'. Many feel the inspectors are deliberately dragging their feet to suit those countries which want sanctions against Iraq to continue.
"One 'bunny-hugger' from an Asian country said: 'I once saw an UNSCOM guy with a US flag stuck on his radio. Normally my colleagues avoid them but I told him he had no right to wear his flag since he was on UN duty and he just brushed past me. I thought, God, if these guys are like this with us, how must they be treating the Iraqis?'."
A UN relief worker from a European country told the Times of India: "There have been many instances where they turn up at warehouses on a Friday knowing it is a holiday. They then demand to be let in but since the guard doesn't have the keys and they don't wait for the storekeeper to be contacted, they break the padlock, search the place and go away, leaving the poor guard to figure out how to lock up the place again.
"Often, they will arrive at a site and demand immediate access. But since the person in charge naturally would like the clearance of his superiors, he asks them to wait, at which point, the UNSCOM experts return to their headquarters and complain of non-compliance."
In June 1997, UNSCOM inspectors desecrated the Mar Yousif and Saydat Al-Sinabul monasteries in Zafaraniya. The papal nuncio formally protested, and UNSCOM was forced to apologise. There have also been searches of kindergartens and universities. University records have been taken away to identify potential chemical weapon experts.
"On one occasion — captured on film — an UNSCOM inspector demanded access to a farm", reported the Times of India correspondent. "When the Iraqi official accompanying him said it was private and asked 'How would you like it if I demanded to enter your house', the UNSCOM man jabbed a finger in his chest and bellowed in a thick American accent: 'You would never enter my home'."
UNSCOM is heavily staffed by nationals of countries which fought the Gulf War, a woman employed by a UN humanitarian program told the Times reporter. "The fact that most are soldiers doesn't help. The UN always had a rule of not sending non-neutral people into any area. In the case of Iraq, this rule has been broken. It's like sending Israelis to Lebanon or Pakistanis to the Kashmir border."
Meanwhile, in a provocative move intended to test the recent deal on weapons inspections between the UN secretary-general and the Iraqi government, the UNSCOM again deployed a team headed by Scott Ritter, a US military intelligence agent who was based in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.
In January, Iraq accused Ritter of being a spy and complained that UNSCOM teams included too many US and British inspectors. UN spokesperson Alan Dacey said on March 3 that Ritter's team "received the full cooperation of the Iraqi authorities".
On March 1, the US opposed a request by Russia that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appoint a Russian to be UNSCOM deputy head.
On March 11, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that a UN technical mission said the eight presidential palaces were much smaller than the US had claimed, and it had failed to find any sumptuous complexes of the type described in the media over the last few months, or any barracks.
In a report presented to the Security Council, the mission said that the eight complexes covered an area of 31.5 square kilometres, not the 110 square kilometres claimed by Washington. The SMH report quoted one western diplomat as saying the inspections of these sites, expected to be carried out in the next two weeks, would be "a farce".