Hi there,

If you think Democracy Now!’s reporting is a critical line of defense against war, climate catastrophe and authoritarianism, please make your donation of $10 or more right now. Today, a generous donor will DOUBLE your donation, which means it’ll go 2x as far to support our independent journalism. Democracy Now! is funded by you, and that’s why we’re counting on your donation to keep us going strong. Please give today. Every dollar makes a difference—in fact, gets doubled! Thank you so much.
-Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

U.S. Removes Only Complete Copy of Iraq Arms Declaration from U.N. HQ

HeadlineDec 10, 2002

The United States is coming under fire from members of the U.N. Security Council after it removed the only complete copy of Iraq’s arms declaration from U.N. headquarters soon after it arrived. On Friday, the 15 nations of the Security Council agreed to hold off on receiving the document until U.N. experts had screened it to delete information that could help make a nuclear weapon. The process was to take seven to 10 days. But The New York Times is reporting that Secretary of State General Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice decided they did not want to wait. Powell then requested preferential treatment from Colombia’s ambassador to the United Nations, who’s temporarily serving as the Security Council president. A Colombian diplomat acknowledged his government had made a political decision to help the U.S. Just last week, Powell visited Colombia to announce the U.S. aid to Colombia would increase by $200 million annually. Officially, the United States said it took the document to Washington because it had better photocopying equipment to duplicate the 12,000-page report. The U.S. has also taken charge of handing out copies to the permanent members, all of whom are nuclear powers, and editing versions to be given to the rotating members, who are not nuclear powers. The Syrian ambassador has led the protest against Washington’s actions. He expressed fear that the U.S. and other permanent members may now declare Iraq to be in material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441 before nonpermanent members even see the report.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top