The man who implemented post Gulf War sanctions against Iraq yesterday expressed dismay at the US drive for military action. In an interview with The Irish Times, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary General between 1992 and 1996, criticised the Security Council and predicted that Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East would be the first beneficiaries of military strikes.
Dr Boutros-Ghali was forced out of the Secretary General's office after only one term by the Clinton administration, and his bitterness at US domination of the world body is clear. "The UN is a political body interested in implementing some resolutions and not others. It acts according to pressure from major actors," he said. "Why was [Resolution] 242 [which demands that Israel withdraw from occupied Arab land] never implemented? Why are resolutions concerning Libya and Iraq implemented? The UN is not a kind of tribunal. It is not a council of wise men trying to solve problems according to equity or natural law. It is a purely political order."
If the US bombs Iraq, Dr Boutros-Ghali predicted, it will claim that Security Council resolutions justify such action; Washington used that argument when it bombed southern Iraq in August 1996, when the CIA operation in Kurdistan collapsed. "The American point of view is that they have the right [to strike] according to resolutions. But what is the point of view of the other 13 or 14 Security Council members? They have participated in these resolutions and yet they are not able to give an interpretation.
"I am astonished that no one mentions the principal actors, who are the suffering Iraqi people. Nobody takes into account what effect [military action] would have on the Iraqi people. And this institution was created to protect people."
Any kind of military strike would strengthen Islamic fundamentalists, Dr Boutros-Ghali, a Coptic Christian, said. "Fundamentalism is a basic anti-western attitude. Here again the West will be bombing an Arab country; Iraqi people will be killed."
As Egyptian foreign minister at the time of the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War, Dr Boutros-Ghali fully supported military action against Iraq. "It was an invasion of a UN member country. It was an anschluss." Although he had reservations about economic sanctions, he said the Secretary General could not take a different position from the Security Council. So he campaigned hard for the oil-for-food agreement.
"It was not an easy operation; the Iraqis made complications and the Anglo-Americans also made complications. To obtain this resolution I was fighting on two fronts," he said.
Dr Boutros-Ghali said he watched the US turn against the UN after the debacle in Mogadishu and the election of a Republican majority to Congress. But he was perplexed by the British position.
"I don't understand why Britain is taking this attitude. In the oil-for-food negotiations, the British ambassador raised more objections than Madeleine Albright. It was the same with the Libyan problem." When asked to comment on the role of Ms Albright - his nemesis at the UN - in the Iraqi crisis, Dr Boutros-Ghali winced and replied: "I am a gentleman; gentlemen don't talk."
Could there be any truth to Iraqi allegations that UN weapons inspectors are not always neutral technicians? "We never know what happens in the UN," Dr Boutros-Ghali admitted. "It is very difficult - will a high-ranking civil servant give information to his own country? Will a general [serving with the UN] act on behalf of his own government? Here the UN is very handicapped; we have no intelligence service . . . "What is in the Charter regarding the independence of the Secretary General unfortunately doesn't correspond to reality, because member-states use the UN for their own purposes."
