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Time Will Tell on Iraqi Inspections, Rumsfeld Says
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

“The United Nations sat there for years with 16 resolutions being violated. Just as we've seen a pattern of behavior with Saddam Hussein, we've also seen a pattern of behavior on the part of the United Nations.”

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
What ultimately happens in reference to the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq is up to the member states and the Security Council itself, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Nov. 19.

Reporters asked the secretary to comment on U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan's comment about continuing Iraqi fire on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones. "I don't think the Security Council will think this is a contravention of the resolution," Reuters reported Annan as saying.

Rumsfeld said Annan's comments did not come as a surprise to him. "Whenever resolutions are crafted they tend to be compromises and there tends to be calculated ambiguities to gain votes," he said.

The secretary said no one knows how Saddam Hussein will react to the United Nations resolution. "(We don't know) whether or not he'll come to a conclusion that it's all over and go ahead and disarm," Rumsfeld said. Nor does anyone know, he added, whether Hussein will stay in Iraq, try to hold his weapons of mass destruction and fight.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan