United Nations Report: Blix Appointment May Set in Motion an End to Iraq Sanctions

While [Saddam Hussain] is a fixture, all the other actors seem to have quick turn-arounds and January and February saw an array of personnel shifts. The Security Council, or rather the Security Council's "friends of Iraq" -- Russia, China and France -- stopped U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposal that Rolf Ekeus, the man who started UNSCOM just after the Gulf war, be brought back to head UNMOVIC, the new monitoring and inspection commission for Iraq. Resolution 1284 gives 45 days from starting for [Hans Blix] to submit plans for staffing and organization, and then, if Iraq allows inspectors in, 60 days for UNMOVIC and the IAEA to compile a list of what Iraq has to do. Then, 120 days after the inspectors enter, if Blix and the IAEA certify cooperation, sanctions could be suspended. There were yet more personnel changes connected with Iraq when Hans von Sponeck resigned in protest against the U.N. sanctions on Feb. 13. Von Sponeck, reappointed last November in the face of public American and British disquiet, was due to go soon anyway, as was his compatriot Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Baghdad, who also resigned.