Known for his aggressive inspection style and strong views regarding Iraqi compliance with their disarmament obligations, at the end of the day, David Kay showed his true grit by standing up to the world and confronting them with the fact that they all got it wrong on Iraq.
By the time I arrived in New York, in mid-September 1991, weapons inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, had been on the ground in Iraq on 16 separate occasions, starting in May. Most of the inspections had been conducted in accordance with the on-site inspection template born of the American experience in implementing the intermediate nuclear forces (INF) treaty, which had entered into force in July 1988 and represented the world’s first foray into on-site inspection as a means of arms control compliance verification.
This template amounted to a gentleman’s agreement, so to speak, where one side provided a thorough declaration of the locations and materials covered by an agreement giving the inspections authority (in the case of Iraq, this meant Security Council resolution 687, passed in April 1991, mandating the creation of UNSCOM and its disarmament mission), and the other side agreed to verify the completeness of that declaration, and oversee the disposition of the material involved, in a manner which respected the sovereignty and dignity of the inspected party.
But there had been some notable exceptions to this template. When Iraq provided UNSCOM with its declaration regarding its holdings of proscribed chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range ballistic missiles (collectively known as weapons of mass destruction, or WMD), many nations who examined this declaration were taken aback by what was not included – Iraq had denied any involvement in either nuclear or biological weapons activities, and had significantly under declared its chemical and long-range ballistic missile capabilities.
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