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American Morning

Interview with Richard Butler

Aired December 09, 2002 - 07:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's get back to Iraq right now. It has made its weapons declaration. The document is now being analyzed by U.N. personnel. How, then, does it change the situation on the ground for the inspectors? Twenty-five more arrived in Baghdad yesterday. The numbers will top at a hundred eventually.
And the former chief inspector, Richard Butler, now joins us again from Down Under in his home country of Australia.

Richard, good to have you back here.

Hello to you.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER CHIEF U.N. INSPECTOR: Good to be here, Bill.

Hello.

HEMMER: If you were examining this document dump, essentially, what do you want to know first, where do you go first in terms of dissecting the information?

BUTLER: You carve the document up into its four main parts -- missile, chemical, biological and nuclear. You then put your team of experts in each of those fields onto that document alongside the same information that Iraq has filed over the past 10 years, its past declarations, and the over one million pages of documents that we had put together in the past, documents taken from Iraq. And, Bill, what you do essentially is you compare the past, what you know about the past with what Iraq now declares as its present position in order to see where the discrepancies and differences, if any, might lie.

That's the first thing you do.

The second thing is that you look to see what might have happened in the four years without inspection, the years where the United States is claiming, for example, that it has intelligence that Iraq has made further weapons of mass destruction. In that sense, you start to look into the future, that is, what has happened in recent time and what the present situation is.

HEMMER: Now, Richard, if you look at some of the people who have examined these in the past and if you listen to the high ranking administration officials in Washington, they will argue time and time again that they may be large in content in terms of number, but they are not substantial in content. Do you see the difference they're trying to draw here and do you agree with that? BUTLER: Well, I'm not sure that I do see the difference because, you know, what is essentially at issue here is what has always been at issue, namely, Iraq's obligation to come forward with its weapons of mass destruction program. What I'm concerned about in the present juncture with a 12,000 page document and a growing noise of propaganda from both sides is that sight will be lost of that fundamental obligation.

What I'm concerned about, Bill, and I'll come straight to this point, is that, you know, people really ought to just take a rest, go to the movies, take a holiday for a few weeks and allow the inspectors to get on with the job that they're mandated to do, which is to examine this document past, present and future, go out and conduct some inspections to see whether or not Iraq is telling the truth and report back to the Security Council, but try to do this in an atmosphere free of the current level, I think, of growing hype on all sides.

HEMMER: So will you disagree with people like Senator Joseph Lieberman, who over the weekend said essentially, urging the White House to cut out the cat and mouse game with Iraq, go directly to the U.N. and say here's material breach and because a material breach has occurred, military action has to follow, get the nations of the world behind you and go about essentially alluding to the eventuality of war.

Is that not a position that should be staked out at this time?

BUTLER: I don't think he's right to say that. I think he's jumping the gun, forgive the pun. No, I don't think that's right. Look, the United States made a very important decision when it went to the Security Council and put this into the hands of that Council, as against taking unilateral action. Having done that, and in that context having made promises to the world about what is, after all, a treasured principle in the United States, due process of law, that it should see this process through under international law as determined by the Security Council.

Now, if it has got something to contribute to that process directly, such as the intelligence information it says it has, I would point out that it's actually obligated under the current Security Council resolution to table that information. That resolution asks all states to give all possible assistance to the job of getting the truth of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But, you know, to try to toss that aside, to short circuit the process and simply go to war, I think, would raise problems, Bill, that are simply incalculable, problems of a political kind, not knowing where that war would land, what it would do in relations between the Arab world and the non-Arab world. I, you know, and it would be probably illegal.

So, you know, I don't think that that's a very smart idea. This is due process and I think it has to be seen through.

HEMMER: And we are all watching it that way. Thank you, Richard.

Richard Butler, again, a former U.N. weapons inspector chief from Australia.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired December 9, 2002 - 07:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's get back to Iraq right now. It has made its weapons declaration. The document is now being analyzed by U.N. personnel. How, then, does it change the situation on the ground for the inspectors? Twenty-five more arrived in Baghdad yesterday. The numbers will top at a hundred eventually.
And the former chief inspector, Richard Butler, now joins us again from Down Under in his home country of Australia.

Richard, good to have you back here.

Hello to you.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER CHIEF U.N. INSPECTOR: Good to be here, Bill.

Hello.

HEMMER: If you were examining this document dump, essentially, what do you want to know first, where do you go first in terms of dissecting the information?

BUTLER: You carve the document up into its four main parts -- missile, chemical, biological and nuclear. You then put your team of experts in each of those fields onto that document alongside the same information that Iraq has filed over the past 10 years, its past declarations, and the over one million pages of documents that we had put together in the past, documents taken from Iraq. And, Bill, what you do essentially is you compare the past, what you know about the past with what Iraq now declares as its present position in order to see where the discrepancies and differences, if any, might lie.

That's the first thing you do.

The second thing is that you look to see what might have happened in the four years without inspection, the years where the United States is claiming, for example, that it has intelligence that Iraq has made further weapons of mass destruction. In that sense, you start to look into the future, that is, what has happened in recent time and what the present situation is.

HEMMER: Now, Richard, if you look at some of the people who have examined these in the past and if you listen to the high ranking administration officials in Washington, they will argue time and time again that they may be large in content in terms of number, but they are not substantial in content. Do you see the difference they're trying to draw here and do you agree with that? BUTLER: Well, I'm not sure that I do see the difference because, you know, what is essentially at issue here is what has always been at issue, namely, Iraq's obligation to come forward with its weapons of mass destruction program. What I'm concerned about in the present juncture with a 12,000 page document and a growing noise of propaganda from both sides is that sight will be lost of that fundamental obligation.

What I'm concerned about, Bill, and I'll come straight to this point, is that, you know, people really ought to just take a rest, go to the movies, take a holiday for a few weeks and allow the inspectors to get on with the job that they're mandated to do, which is to examine this document past, present and future, go out and conduct some inspections to see whether or not Iraq is telling the truth and report back to the Security Council, but try to do this in an atmosphere free of the current level, I think, of growing hype on all sides.

HEMMER: So will you disagree with people like Senator Joseph Lieberman, who over the weekend said essentially, urging the White House to cut out the cat and mouse game with Iraq, go directly to the U.N. and say here's material breach and because a material breach has occurred, military action has to follow, get the nations of the world behind you and go about essentially alluding to the eventuality of war.

Is that not a position that should be staked out at this time?

BUTLER: I don't think he's right to say that. I think he's jumping the gun, forgive the pun. No, I don't think that's right. Look, the United States made a very important decision when it went to the Security Council and put this into the hands of that Council, as against taking unilateral action. Having done that, and in that context having made promises to the world about what is, after all, a treasured principle in the United States, due process of law, that it should see this process through under international law as determined by the Security Council.

Now, if it has got something to contribute to that process directly, such as the intelligence information it says it has, I would point out that it's actually obligated under the current Security Council resolution to table that information. That resolution asks all states to give all possible assistance to the job of getting the truth of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But, you know, to try to toss that aside, to short circuit the process and simply go to war, I think, would raise problems, Bill, that are simply incalculable, problems of a political kind, not knowing where that war would land, what it would do in relations between the Arab world and the non-Arab world. I, you know, and it would be probably illegal.

So, you know, I don't think that that's a very smart idea. This is due process and I think it has to be seen through.

HEMMER: And we are all watching it that way. Thank you, Richard.

Richard Butler, again, a former U.N. weapons inspector chief from Australia.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com