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The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1441 by a vote of 15-0 on November 8, requiring Iraq to admit inspectors from the UN Monitoring, Verification and In
spection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Baghdad accepted the new resolution November 13, and it must submit a declaration of its prohibited weapons programs by December 8, 2002. Inspections are scheduled to begin November 27, and the inspectors are required to update the Security Council on their progress 60 days later.
Resolution 1441 gives inspectors a stronger mandate than they had under previous Security Council resolutions. UN inspectors now have the authority to prohibit the movement of vehicles and aircraft around sites they wish to inspect in order to prevent Iraq from moving weapons materials. Inspectors have the right to interview anyone they choose, without Iraqi officials present, in any location they wish, including outside Iraq.
The resolution also encourages governments to share intelligence data with inspectors. Additionally, it mandates access to "presidential sites," superseding a 1998 memorandum of understanding between Baghdad and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that had placed special conditions on inspections of those sites.
The product of weeks of bargaining among Security Council members, the new resolution is a compromise. (See ACT, November 2002.) France and Russia had been concerned that language originally proposed by the United States and the United Kingdom set an unacceptably low threshold for initiating military action against Iraq to enforce the resolution and minimized the role of the Security Council. The new resolution states that this is Iraq's "final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" and requires that reports from inspectors and member states about Iraqi noncompliance that could constitute "material breach" of the resolution be referred to the Security Council.
The Security Council members continue to have different interpretations of exactly what Iraqi violations might justify military action against the country.
Weapons inspectors have not been able to work in Iraq since 1998, when Iraq stopped complying with monitoring activities and halted cooperation with weapons inspectors, then comprised of personnel from the IAEA and the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). The IAEA and UNSCOM withdrew their personnel in December 1998, just before the United States and the United Kingdom initiated three...