The United States on Wednesday upstaged talks between the UN and Iraq by releasing pictures allegedly showing that Iraq had diverted vehicles from a UN humanitarian programme to its army.
The pictures, a mix of satellite photos, videoclips and Iraqi television footage, were shown to members of the Security Council committee that monitors UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The committee met on the eve of talks between UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
The talks are expected to focus on the council’s demand that UN inspectors be allowed to resume work to assess Iraq’s claim that it dismantled its weapons of mass destruction after being forced out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
Robert Wood, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations, said the pictures showed hundreds of trucks, imported under the UN’s oil-for-food programme, which had been “diverted and converted to carry heavy artillery”.
Some of the trucks appeared to have been stripped for spare parts, notably their hydraulic systems, which “can be used as part of a missile component,” Wood told reporters outside the committee chamber.
Others, including “Ural-type vehicles”, were filmed towing 150-millimeter howitzers in a military parade in Baghdad on December 31, he said.
“All this is in violation of UN resolutions,” he added.
Other diplomats were less categorical.
“We saw pictures of (the Iraqi Gulf port of) Umm Qasr and we saw pictures of trucks on the shore,” said Fabrice Mauries, a diplomat at the French mission.
“Then we saw pictures of trucks, other trucks or the same trucks, at a Republican Guard parade.
“Were these trucks imported under the oil-for-food programme? The US says it is the case, other delegations say we don’t know, we need more information.”
Asked for the French view, he replied “France says we have to be cautious.”
