Laboratory for controlling Iraqi weapons in Bahrain
Bahrain-Iraq-UN, Politics, 2/10/2000

Bahrain has urged the UN to announce whether it will close off its laboratory designated to control the Iraqi weapons. The laboratory has been located in Bahrain since 1991.

Diplomats in the US said on Tuesday that Bahrain's officials who had the desire to close the general center last year, proposed several questions to the UN employees in Bahrain as part of previous questionnaires submitted by Bahrain at the UN in New York.

Bahrain has not disclosed its reasons for calling to end the existence of the committee which is assigned the task of controlling the Iraqi weapons.

But diplomats say that after nine years it has become clear that there is a price paid by Bahrain in the Arab states for hosting an organization implementing sanctions on Iraq, besides Bahrain is also hosting the US Fifth Fleet.

At the present, the center is run by three guarding officials for items left at the center before the evacuation of the UN inspectors from Iraq on the eve of the air raids launched by the US and Britain against Iraq in December 1998. Baghdad has not permitted the UN inspection team to return and resume its missions in Iraq since then.

In the previous years, Bahrain's center was used as a base for receiving the inspectors of the UN Special Committee (UNSCOM) which was in charge of eliminating the Iraqi weapons in their travels to and from Baghdad.

It seems, however, the US has not taken a final decision on this issue as the charge de affairs of the chairman of the dissolved UN committee, Charles Dulfer stated that the chairman of the new committee (UNMOVIC), Sweden's Hans Blix, is the one who will take the decision concerning the Bahrain office.

Meanwhile, Bahrain's representative at the UN refused to comment on the report.

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