Over the course of March, diplomats at the United Nations negotiated the terms
of what would become the longest, most detailed, and most complex resolution to
emerge from the Security Council. On April 3 by a vote of 12-1 (Cuba voted no,
Ecuador and Yemen abstained), the council adopted Resolution 687, effectively put-
ting Iraq at the mercy of the United Nations.
The economic sanctions imposed against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait
were to continue but could be lifted gradually as Iraq met certain conditions. Chief
among these were requirements that Iraq recognize the sovereignty of Kuwait; pay
reparations to Kuwait for damages caused during the seven-month occupation; pro-
vide an accounting of the thousands of Kuwaitis who had disappeared during the occu-
pation; end the repression of Iraqi citizens; and cease to threaten the security and sta-
bility of its other neighbors.
Some of the most important provisions of the resolution generated little contro-
versy at the time but would play a major role in Middle Eastern affairs for the next
dozen years. Among them, the resolution required that Iraq eliminate all of its so-
called weapons of mass destruction, including biological and chemical weapons, and
programs to build them. The resolution also ordered Iraq to comply with the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—which bars Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons—
and it prohibited Iraq from possessing ballistic missiles with a range of ninety miles
or greater. These requirements marked the first time the Security Council had ordered
an individual country to divest itself of specific types of weapons.
Iraqi compliance regarding biological and chemical weapons and missiles was to
be monitored by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). Responsibil-
ity for monitoring its compliance with the NPT continued to rest with the UN’s Inter-
national Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The UN agencies began their work on Iraq almost immediately but faced restric-
tions on their access to sensitive Iraqi weapons facilities despite the UN resolution’s
demand for full cooperation by Baghdad. Even so, UNSCOM chief Rolf Ekeus
reported on July 3 that his inspectors had found four times as many chemical weapons
as the Iraqi government had acknowledged. Under international pressure, the govern-
ment also acknowledged the existence of nuclear weapons programs suggesting that its
work in this area had been further along than Western experts believed. The combi-
nation of the weapons inspections and continued economic sanctions provided the
United Nations leverage over Iraq and would be the dominant factor in the interna-
tional community’s relationship—or lack thereof—with Iraq for the next dozen years
(UN Weapons Inspections, p. 473).
Following are excerpts from UN Security Council Resolution 687,adopted on April
3, 1991, imposing postwar conditions and sanctions on Iraq.IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 467