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Annan names board to help UN agency on Iraqi arms

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named 17 members for a key board of commissioners to advise the new disarmament agency for Iraq, diplomats said.

The 17, most of them nominated by their respective governments, are to provide "professional advice" to the newly created U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), in charge of accounting for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Annan has to consult the Security Council about the list, obtained by Reuters late on Tuesday. But the council does not have to approve the new College of Commissioners, which is to be led by UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix of Sweden.

Only three of the commissioners, from Britain, Canada and Finland, served on the board of the agency's predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission for Iraq (UNSCOM). Only three members are women-- from France, Finland and the United Nations.

The American representative, Robert Einhorn, is assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation and a former State Department arms control adviser. He replaces Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of UNSCOM, who also served as the U.S. commissioner on the board.

Although the commission has been set up as a nonpolitical body, it reflects an increase in the ratio of government policy makers to technical experts in U.N. monitoring of Iraqi arms.

The new commissioners are drawn from more developing nations than were represented on previous boards. They are expected to meet at least four times a year and review Blix's key reports to the council.

At the moment, however, there is little to do. Iraq has not let U.N. inspectors in the country since they withdrew shortly before U.S.-British bombing raids in December 1998. They were conducted to force Iraq to cooperate with the arms experts.

The commissioners, in addition to Blix and Einhorn, are:

ARGENTINA: Gunterio Heineken, professor of rocket and gun propulsion, Technical High School of the Army in Buenos Aires.

BRAZIL: Roque Monteleone-Neto, professor, University of Sao Paulo, and Brazil's technical adviser for the biological weapons convention.

BRITAIN: Paul Schulte, Defence Ministry director for proliferation and arms control, former UNSCOM commissioner.

CANADA: Ronald Cleminson, former Foreign Ministry trade official, former UNSCOM commissioner, expert on monitoring and verification of dangerous weapons.

CHINA: Cong Guang, a deputy director in the Foreign Ministry's department of international organisations.

FINLAND: Marjatta Rautio, chemical weapons expert at the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, former UNSCOM commissioner.

FRANCE: Therese Delpech, director for strategic affairs at France's Atomic Energy Commission, former head of Annan's advisory board on disarmament.

GERMANY: Reinhard Boehm, scientist at the University of Hohenheim who worked on issues connected with anthrax bacteria, which can be used in biological arms.

INDIA: Annaswamy Narayana Prasad, former director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, former member of Indian Atomic Energy Commission, former consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

JAPAN: Takanori Kazuhara, former ambassador to international organisations based in Vienna, former director of Foreign Ministry's disarmament division.

NIGERIA: Adigun Ade Abjodan, special assistant to the president of Nigeria on space, science and technology.

RUSSIA: Yuri Fedotov, former deputy ambassador in U.N. mission, director of the Foreign Ministry's international organisations department.

SENEGAL: Cheikh Sylla, ambassador to Burkina Faso, member of the joint group of the United Nations and the Organisation of Africa Unity that drafted treaty on Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone.

UKRAINE: Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, ambassador to the United States, chairman of national committee on disarmament, member of U.N. secretary-general's advisory board on disarmament.

UNITED NATIONS: Hannelore Hoope, chief of disarmament department branch dealing with weapons of mass destruction.-Reuters