After Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the war that followed, the UN Security Council ruled that Iraq must rid itself of all weapons of mass destruction. The difficult, politically sensitive, and dangerous task of accomplishing this rested with the UN...
mehr
After Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the war that followed, the UN Security Council ruled that Iraq must rid itself of all weapons of mass destruction. The difficult, politically sensitive, and dangerous task of accomplishing this rested with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), led by Ekéus, one of Sweden's most seasoned diplomats. This was a radical experiment in UN governance - essentially conveying to one individual the power to conduct a disarmament program, with oversight only by the Security Council. What followed were a succession of tense conversations with the Iraqi leadership, often-dangerous inspections, complex destruction processes, negotiations with Security Council representatives, and diplomatic maneuvering by world leaders. The recounting of these events lies at the heart of Ekéus's personal narrative of disarmament history in the making, a narrative that adds substantially to the evidence that UNSCOM's mission was successful and the 2003 war clearly illegal.
