Mr President,

The international situation is more uncertain than it has been for a very long time. Many people are deeply worried. The UN has given Iraq a last chance to comply with the international community’s demand that it eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. Time has not yet run out, but there is definitely a danger of war. I understand and share the unease this is creating. It is important that we all hold on to our conviction that the use of military force is not inevitable. The Government’s policy will continue to be that everything possible must be done to obtain a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Although the Iraq question will be my main focus today, since this is my annual statement to the Storting, I will also devote some time to other international issues of importance to Norway. Several of the parties in the Storting have asked me to give a briefing on the WTO negotiations and the consequences for Norway of EU and NATO enlargement and the increasingly close co-operation between these bodies, and to say something about our term on the Security Council. I will also speak briefly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the efforts being made to solve the serious problems caused by radioactive pollution in northwestern Russia.

But I will begin with the question that is on everyone’s mind: the current status of the Iraq issue and how it is being dealt with in the Security Council.

Mr President,

Iraq is ruled by a particularly brutal dictator. Saddam Hussein’s regime is notorious for its massive violations of human rights. Iraq has twice invaded neighbouring countries. It has used weapons of mass destruction in two conflicts. Chemical weapons were used several times during the second half of the 1980s, against the Kurds in Northern Iraq and in the war against Iran. Thousands of lives have been lost.

In its dealings with the international community, the regime has resorted to denials and lies. But despite Iraqi attempts to play cat and mouse, the international weapons inspectors managed to find and destroy considerable arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s. However, such great obstacles were put in their way by the Iraqi regime that the UN Secretary-General finally decided to withdraw them in 1998 without obtaining satisfactory answers to a number of serious questions.

These questions are still unanswered. The international community has reiterated that it will not turn a blind eye to the threat this poses. Therefore, the demands made on Iraq by the UN after the liberation of Kuwait have remained unchanged for more than 11 years: the uncertainty as to whether or not Iraq has weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated, and the country must not be allowed to obtain new ones.

To achieve this goal, Iraq has since 1991been subject to sanctions that are intended to prevent it from developing new weapons of mass destruction, and to a demand for inspections to verify that it is eliminating any such weapons it may have and discontinuing any weapons programmes. This is the basis for the UN’s approach to the Iraq question, and it has been set out in a large number of binding Security Council resolutions.

Therefore, Security Council resolution 1441 of 8 November 2002 confirms and strengthens binding demands made over a period of many years. The resolution gives the regime in Baghdad a final opportunity to comply with the UN’s demands.

On 27 January, UNMOVIC’s Executive Chairman, Hans Blix, and the IAEA’s Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, reported to the Security Council on the inspections carried out in Iraq since 27 November last year. Their reports were more alarming than I had expected. The inspectors stated they had received incomplete answers from Iraq on several important points, which leaves a number of serious questions unanswered.

These are some examples of such questions:

Firstly, the Iraqi authorities have not provided a satisfactory explanation for what happened to 6500 unused chemical warheads from the war against Iran. They may contain some 1000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents. We do not know where they are. Such large amounts could cause irreparable damage.

Secondly, it is unclear what has happened to 8500 litres of concentrated anthrax that Iraq earlier admitted to possessing.

Thirdly, there is considerable uncertainty about Iraq’s missile systems. The inspectors have found indications that Iraq has manufactured missiles in violation of UN demands, and that these may have a longer range than the 150 km limit set by the UN.

The weapons inspectors have also indicated that the uncertainty about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is solely due to Iraqi failure to co-operate, even though the authorities technically speaking have facilitated the inspections. Clearly Iraq has still not understood that it is absolutely necessary to produce complete documentation as it is explicitly required to do in resolution 1441.

The truly disturbing question is, if Iraq really has nothing to hide, why are the authorities not co-operating to the satisfaction of the inspectors and the Security Council?

To be sure, additional documentation was produced during Blix’ and ElBaradei’s visit to Baghdad last weekend, but this does not seem to have had any appreciable influence on the inspectors’ criticism. I presume that the inspectors will discuss this more fully when they report to the Security Council tomorrow.

It is important for the international community to keep up political and diplomatic pressure on the regime in Iraq. The Iraqis still have the time and the possibility to make use of this final chance to comply with the international community’s demands. But time is running out. The responsibility and the burden of proof lie entirely with Iraq. The country must show in practice that it is willing to comply with resolution 1441 and co-operate fully with the inspectors.

But it remains to be seen whether the regime in Baghdad is willing to do this. We must not forget that ever since 1991, Iraq has failed to comply with binding resolutions of the Security Council and has done what it can to prevent the weapons inspectors from completing their investigations.

Nor must we forget that it was only after President Bush’s speech on 12 September last year that Saddam Hussein agreed to resume co-operation with the UN. And it was only after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech on 5 February this year that the regime indicated that it would make further concessions to the inspectors.

Our experience is that strong pressure has to be put on the regime in Baghdad before it is willing to co-operate.

Secretary of State Powell delivered a comprehensive statement to the Security Council on 5 February. The scope and detail of his account mean that it cannot be ignored.

Some people say that Powell’s statement told us nothing new. I myself was not aware of everything he talked about. Nor had I seen the information put together in this way before. However, the crucial point is not whether the information is new, but whether it is correct. As far as I can see, objections have only been raised to a few of the points in his thorough account.

It is positive that the USA has further documented the possible existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This is exactly the kind of information that Norway and other countries have been calling for.

The sum of the documentation and information that the USA presented to the Security Council supports the weapons inspectors’ conclusion that Iraq has not provided the UN with complete information. I trust that the weapons inspectors are reviewing and evaluating more closely the information presented by the USA and will report back to the Security Council.

Mr President,

The next few days and weeks will be decisive for the way the Iraq issue develops. The situation is extremely serious, and we must be prepared for the fact that the USA and the UK with the support of several other countries will be willing to use military force if the regime in Baghdad does not co-operate fully. As we all know, preparations for military operations are in full swing.

But I would like to emphasise once more that the Security Council has not finished its deliberations on the question of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. We have not yet exhausted all the available diplomatic and political means.

I noted that during his statement to the Security Council, Secretary of State Powell emphasised that the Council did not draw up resolution 1441 in order to go to war, but in order to maintain peace – and to give Iraq a last chance. Powell showed a clear willingness to continue on the UN track. This is positive and in keeping with the Norwegian position that the Security Council is responsible for dealing with the Iraq question and for maintaining international peace and security.

The Norwegian Government still considers it essential to seek to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction without using military force.

The Government’s position is therefore that the issue must be dealt with once more in the Security Council in the light of the weapons inspectors’ reports. The response of the world community must be based on a Security Council resolution. This will be the basis for the Government’s further consideration of the matter. Norway must take an independent standpoint, but of course within the limits that a binding decision of the Security Council sets for all UN member countries.

Both during Norway’s term on the Security Council and subsequently, the Government has consistently maintained that it is the UN track that must be followed. This is not because we are incapable of action, but because we have made a fundamental choice based on the role that the international community has given the Security Council.

But what does this mean in practice?

Firstly, through resolution 1441 we have put considerable pressure on the regime in Baghdad, not least because the resolution states explicitly that Iraq will face serious consequences unless it is willing to co-operate. We do not wish to weaken the pressure on Saddam Hussein by drawing conclusions at this point, before the Security Council has considered the matter again.

Secondly, it means that the weapons inspectors must be given an opportunity to do their job and the time to do it in. And they must be given all possible support, as UNMOVIC and the IAEA have requested. I said something along these lines after the inspectors had presented their first report on 27 January this year. We must remain open to all constructive proposals that can contribute to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, provided that Iraq co-operates.

Thirdly, the decision on the way forward must be taken in the Security Council. It must be founded on the best possible factual basis. And this basis must be in place before the Security Council makes the difficult decision on how to proceed.

Some people have claimed that this is an unclear position. But they are wrong. However, the choice we have made means that we neither can nor will cross any bridges before we get to them.

The weapons inspectors will be reporting to the Security Council again tomorrow. Unless there are clear indications that Iraq is prepared to co-operate actively with them and comply fully and without delay with the Security Council’s demands, we will be facing an extremely serious situation. However, it would not be right for me to speculate in advance on what conclusions the Security Council will ultimately reach.

It is important that all feasible routes to a solution without the use of military force are tried. The best route is the one that the authorities in Baghdad have the key to: they can comply with the UN’s demands.

Mr President,

I would like to say a few words about NATO’s deliberations on the Iraq issue. The Allied consultations are about safeguarding Turkey’s security policy interests. Turkey feels that its security will be threatened by Iraq if war breaks out, and has therefore made use of its right as a NATO member to raise this issue in the NATO Council. This is solely a matter of defensive contingency measures that do not in any way anticipate the efforts being made in the UN Security Council to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

It should be noted that the division in Allied views on the planning of such defensive contingency measures does not run down the middle of the Atlantic. Fourteen of the European Allies have joined with the USA and Canada in advocating a swift decision, and only Germany, France and Belgium have adopted a different view. So if there is any division of opinion, it runs straight through Europe.

For Norway, it is of course of the utmost importance to maintain the solidarity of the Alliance. I therefore hope that it will be possible to reach a NATO decision as soon as possible.

Mr President,

Matters that have a bearing on international peace and security must be dealt with by the Security Council, and the Council’s resolutions must be in accordance with the UN Charter and existing international law. This has been our point of departure when dealing with the Iraq issue and other matters as a member of the Security Council. We consider it vital that there is no departure from this principle. The system of collective security provided by the UN Charter must not be undermined.

Although the five permanent members of the Security Council hold a dominant position in relation to much of the Council’s work, we found during our two-year membership that small countries are also able to exert an influence. But this means that they must be willing to allocate the necessary resources for this work.

One of the most important lessons we learned in the Council was that good results are usually contingent on consensus among the Council’s members on the decisions that are adopted. I think I can say that we helped to ensure broad support for the matters we gave priority to – primarily Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan, the fight against international terrorism and the reform of sanctions against Iraq. The debates on the Middle East were, as so often before, characterised by conflicting views, but during our presidency the Council agreed on two important resolutions on the situation in this region.

We will now carry on our work on these issues in other forums.

As chairman of the sanctions committee on Iraq, we played a central role in the efforts to reform the sanctions regime. We received broad support on these reforms, which made it possible to meet the population’s humanitarian needs while at the same time doing what we could to prevent the regime from developing new weapons of mass destruction. In this connection the present government was able to base its efforts on the valuable work done by the previous government.

However, in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that Iraq is able to sell unlimited amounts of oil, the regime’s priorities under the UN’s oil-for-food programme have meant that a large proportion of the civilian population is in a difficult humanitarian situation. Norway has therefore for several years supported a number of humanitarian programmes in Iraq, both through Norwegian NGOs and through the UN system. Norway also contributes to the UN Trust Fund for Preventive Action.

We are of course following the humanitarian situation in Iraq closely. If developments so require, we are prepared, together with the UN, other international organisations and Norwegian NGOs, to assist at short notice. In this connection I would like to remind the members of the Storting that the authorities, together with NGOs and Norwegian producers of emergency relief products, have established a special preparedness system.

Mr President,

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians has recently been overshadowed by all the attention being paid to Iraq. However, a solution to both these issues is essential if there is to be peace in the region in the long term.

Because of our many years of involvement in this region, we have a responsibility to see that this conflict is not forgotten and that the international community does its utmost to help meet the enormous challenges in the Palestinian Territory. The only possible solution is to start as soon as possible on the path to realising the vision of two states – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace.

As chair of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee for the Co-ordination of International Assistance to the Palestinian People (AHLC), Norway has arranged a meeting for the donor countries in London this coming Tuesday and Wednesday. The main focus of the meeting will be the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians. But we will of course also give weight to efforts to help the actors concerned to get the political process back on track.

The AHLC meeting will be followed by a meeting of the international group that is assisting the Palestinians with their reforms. Norway has taken an active part in the work of this group, among other things as co-ordinator of the work at the local level. The Quartet, which consists of special envoys from the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, is also planning to meet immediately after the AHLC meeting. In this way we hope that the meetings in London will encourage a stronger international focus on the political and humanitarian aspects of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr President,

The general economic situation is coloured by a downturn in large parts of the world, financial crises and unemployment, and this is accompanied by a pessimistic view of the prospects for the world economy. Thus for both political and economic reasons the need for co-operation across national borders is greater than ever. The WTO negotiations may help to alleviate this difficult situation.

The last time I briefed the Storting on the WTO was in the run-up to the organisation’s fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha in November 2001. The Conference showed that despite the turbulent world situation so soon after 11 September, it was possible for the 142 member states to agree on a balanced mandate that reflected the priorities and views of different countries. This gave the green light for a new round of WTO negotiations.

Now, a little over a year later, the negotiations are well under way. The issues under discussion include trade in services, agriculture, market access for non-agricultural products, including fish and fish products, anti-dumping and subsidies and certain aspects of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). In addition, negotiations are taking place on how the special needs of developing countries can be taken into account within the framework of the WTO rules.

The negotiations are scheduled to be completed by 1 January 2005. They are being conducted on the principle that "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed". This means that virtually every item of the negotiations must be viewed as part of a whole and indivisible package.

Agriculture is perhaps the most difficult subject under negotiation, not least because

the importance to society of agricultural production and trade in agricultural goods goes far beyond their purely economic value. The negotiations are a continuation of the reform that was begun during the Uruguay round, when the parties undertook to make substantial reductions in duties on agricultural products and reductions in support to agriculture. The current negotiations are concerned with how large these reductions are to be.

A large number of the member states have offensive interests in the agricultural sector. This is also true of many of the developing countries, which are demanding access to markets in the industrial countries and the elimination of export subsidies, but which at the same time wish to protect their own markets. However, the parties are very far apart, and they are under strong pressure to moderate their positions. We must therefore be prepared for the possibility that the outcome of the negotiations will have significant consequences for Norwegian agriculture.

Norway has considerable offensive interests as regards market access for non-agricultural products, including fish and fish products. This applies to, among other things, the elimination of customs duties and ensuring better and more predictable anti-dumping rules. In the negotiations on the revision of the anti-dumping agreement, our main aim is to ensure that the it cannot be used by other member states to exclude Norwegian goods from their markets on an arbitrary basis.

The negotiations on trade in services have so far been fairly painless. This is a welcome development for us, because the service sector accounts for a large proportion of the growth in Norwegian exports. It is therefore in Norway’s interests to ensure better market access for its export companies on the world market. At the same time, the demands we have been presented with so far are largely in line with what we have already done at national level. A central principle of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is that the member states themselves decide which obligations they wish to undertake. The developing countries consider this to be one of the most important advantages of the agreement.

During the preparations for the negotiations, the developing countries’ demands for special arrangements in a number of fields were a central issue. As the negotiations progress, it is becoming increasingly clear that the developing countries are not a homogeneous group. Their offensive and defensive interests vary. The majority of the developing countries are interested in agriculture and textiles, while others also have offensive interests in connection with a broad range of non-agricultural products.

Norway has granted duty-free and quota-free access for all products from the least developed countries. However, the problem for these countries is that they are often not able to meet the quality standards set by many importing countries. They are therefore dependent on assistance to make use of the market access they do have.

In Doha, the Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health helped to make it possible to arrive at a mandate for the negotiations. This Declaration makes it clear that the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health. This means in practice that in an emergency, patent rights can be set aside so that a country can obtain reasonably-priced medicines by producing them itself. Rules are now being developed to make it possible for the poorest developing countries that do not have their own manufacturing capacities to obtain reasonably-priced medicines.

Mr President,

Global co-operation is strengthened by regional co-operation, and therefore the two must go hand in hand. Currently no other region is undergoing such an intensive process of integration as our own region, Europe. The historic enlargement decisions at the NATO summit in Prague in November and at the EU summit in Copenhagen in December will mean the disappearance of the last political vestiges of the Cold War divide in Europe.

In NATO, accession talks with the seven invited countries are well under way, and they are scheduled to be completed in the course of March. The EU for its part has completed negotiations with the ten future members, and the accession agreements will be signed in two months’ time. Both the EU and the NATO enlargement will take effect in May 2004. This will be yet another watershed.

These two enlargements will help to enhance security and stability in Europe. Our common ability to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow will be improved. This is why Norway has given its full support to the enlargement processes.

It is important to keep up the momentum towards pan-European co-operation and stability that has so far been achieved. However, economic divisions do not automatically disappear even if the political ones are eliminated. Norway therefore welcomes the fact that the EU summit in Copenhagen reaffirmed the European perspective of Turkey and also of the countries of the Western Balkans and confirmed its desire to strengthen its ties with Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The aim is regional stability and co-operation and support for democratic and economic reforms.

Norway was also pleased to note that the summit reached agreement on participation in EU-led military operations by allied non-EU countries. Our relations with the EU in the field of security policy have now been further clarified, and we can look forward to closer co-operation between the EU and NATO on crisis management and conflict resolution.

Now that the arrangements for third states’ participation are in place, the agreement on the EU’s assured access to NATO resources for crisis management can also be completed. As a result, we must expect that the EU will gradually take over responsibility for more peace-keeping operations. We must ensure that the participation arrangements we have now obtained with the EU in the defence and security policy field meet Norway’s needs. The Government views Norwegian participation in various EU-led operations, for example in Macedonia and Bosnia, as an important task.

Mr President,

Finally, I would like to say a words about our environmental co-operation with Russia. For many years we have been helping to improve safety standards at nuclear installations and to safeguard nuclear material and radioactive waste in Russia. This work has become even more important and urgent since 11 September 2001. Efforts to prevent the spread of radioactive substances and nuclear material and to prevent terrorism have moved further up the international agenda.

Under the Norwegian plan of action for nuclear safety issues, we have allocated substantial funding to measures to safeguard nuclear material and dangerous sources of radioactivity in Russia. For example, we have collected a number of strontium batteries that have been used to provide power for lighthouse lanterns in the northern areas. The batteries are highly radioactive and can be used in the construction of "dirty bombs". We have now undertaken to finance the dismantling of two Russian nuclear submarines. This work will be started in the near future.

We are also currently in contact with members of the G-8 with a view to improving the co-ordination of our efforts with the considerable work being done by these countries.

Mr President,

All the challenges I have mentioned in my statement have this in common: they can only be resolved through international solidarity and co-operation, whether at global or regional level. The Government will ensure that Norway continues to take its share of the responsibility for these efforts. For it is in Norway’s own national interest to strive for an international community based on the UN Charter, international law and binding intergovernmental co-operation.