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 Home > News & Policies > January 2003

For Immediate Release
January 28, 2003

Global Message

KEY POINTS

  • Eighty days ago, on November 8, in a historic display of unity, the UN Security Council gave Iraq a final opportunity to voluntarily disarm.

  • The purpose of UN Resolution 1441 was disarmament. Inspections are a means to an end and they cannot be expected to succeed when a country has an active program of denial and deception, as is the case with Iraq.

  • For 11 years before Resolution 1441, Saddam Hussein's regime refused to make the strategic and political decision to disarm itself of WMD. To this day, the regime continues to defy the will of the international community.

  • There is an entire state apparatus in Iraq whose sole purpose is to obstruct the inspections. Inspectors are outnumbered by minders, sometimes by as many as five-to-one, each time they head out on a mission.