One of the last UN operations on eliminating all weapons was connected with the investigation of Iraqi arsenal, as there were some data proving that Iraq possesses very dangerous weapons that might be lethal to the mankind. The nation of Iraq is relatively young; the country achieved independence in 1932. Since then, Iraq has been almost perpetually at war with its neighbors. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Iraq has been under international sanctions since the invasion and the United Nations refused to lift them until it is convinced that Iraq has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. The United States and Britain threatened air strikes in 1998 over Iraq's refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors' free access to all sites. The United States and its allies patrol a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Kurds from attack and in the south to protect Shiite Muslims. Almost all countries are concerned with Iraq's unwillingness to allow UN inspectors investigate its military arsenal. For example Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus - who led the UN investigations from the cease-fire through the summer of 1997 and headed to Baghdad for talks, said that they had declared everything. Iraq stated that no documents existed in Iraq because they had been destroyed. That was exploded totally, because Iraq itself admitted in writing even that it had been lying. Cheating systematically from when we started in 1991 up until this very date in August of 1995.
5.2.1 Iraq/Kuwait conflict To understand the essence of the conflict it is necessary to descry the reasons of the conflict. Shortly after the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq’s military dictator, Saddam Hussein, accused Kuwait of taking an unfair share of oil revenues. In August 1990 he made the claim that Kuwait was a part of Iraq and ordered his armies to invade and occupy Kuwait. The Iraqi invasion alarmed President Bush and other world leaders for three reasons. First, it was an act of aggression by a strong nation against a weaker nation. (Iraq in 1990 had the fourth largest military force in the world.) Second, the taking of Kuwait opened the way to an Iraqi conquest of the world’s largest oil-producing nation, Saudi Arabia. Third, the combination of Iraq’s military power and aggressive actions would allow it to dominate the other countries of the Middle East. To prevent further aggression, President Bush ordered 200,000 troops to Saudi Arabia, followed later by an additional 300,000. “We have drawn a line in the sand,” said the president, as he announced a defensive effort called Operation Desert Shield. US troops were joined by other forces from a UN-supported coalition of 28 nations including Great Britain, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt. Members of the UN Security Council, including both the United States and the Soviet Union, voted for a series of resolution concerning Iraq’s aggression. One UN resolution demanded Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Other resolutions placed an international embargo on trade with Iraq and authorized UN members to use force if Iraqi troops did not leave Kuwait by January 15, 1991. As the January deadline neared, members of Congress debated whether or not to authorize the president to send US troops into combat in the Persian Gulf. Both houses voted in favor of the war resolution. [ ] The Gulf War had far greater significance to the emerging post-cold war world than simply reversing Iraqi aggression and restoring Kuwait. In international terms, we tried to establish a model for the use of force. First and foremost was the principle that aggression cannot pay. If we dealt properly with Iraq, that should go a long way toward dissuading future would-be aggressors. We also believed that the US should not go it alone, that a multilateral approach was better.
