- The former chief weapons inspector in Iraq Richard Butler
has lashed out at United States "double standards", saying even
educated Americans were deaf to arguments about the hypocrisy of their
stance on nuclear weapons.
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- Mr Butler, an Australian, told a seminar at the University
of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies that Americans did not
appreciate they could not claim a right to possess nuclear weapons but
deny it to other nations.
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- "My attempts to have Americans enter into discussions
about double standards have been an abject failure - even with highly educated
and engaged people," Mr Butler said. "I sometimes felt I was
speaking to them in Martian, so deep is their inability to understand."
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- Mr Butler's comments to the seminar, held on September21,
are reported in the university's latest newsletter.
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- "What America totally fails to understand is that
their weapons of mass destruction are just as much a problem as are those
of Iraq," he said, adding that Hollywood storylines fuelled such attitudes.
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- Mr Butler said the horror of September 11 had only entrenched
the idea in Americans that there are 'good weapons of mass destruction
and bad ones'.
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- Mr Butler, who headed the United Nations weapons inspection
team in Iraq in the early 1990s, is a former Australian ambassador for
disarmament.
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- Earlier, delivering the university's Templeton Lecture,
Mr Butler said one of the most difficult times with the Iraqi regime had
been dealing with this issue of inconsistency.
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- "Amongst my toughest moments in Baghdad were when
the Iraqis demanded that I explain why they should be hounded for their
weapons of mass destruction when, just down the road, Israel was not, even
though it was known to possess some 200 nuclear weapons," he said.
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- "I confess, too, that I flinch when I hear American,
British and French fulminations against weapons of mass destruction, ignoring
the fact that they are the proud owners of massive quantities of those
weapons, unapologetically insisting that they are essential for their national
security, and will remain so."
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- Mr Butler said that manifest unfairness - double standards
- produced a situation "that was deeply, inherently unstable".
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- "This is because human beings will not swallow such
unfairness. This principle is as certain as the basic laws of physics itself."
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- Mr Butler said one problem encountered in Iraq was that
materials and technologies employed in making a chemical or biological
weapon were identical to those used in a range of benign products for medical,
industrial or agricultural use.
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- The UN Security Council's decision in 1991 to destroy,
remove or render harmless Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was unique
and far-reaching, far tougher than past attempts to disarm defeated countries
like Germany and Japan.
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- http://www.smh.com.au
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/03/1033538680140.html
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