| March 17 |
•
United States, Britain and Spain abandon efforts to get international
endorsement for war against Saddam Hussein.
• UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan orders the evacuation of all UN
international staff from Iraq including weapons inspectors.
The oil-for-food program is also suspended. |
| March 16 |
• Bush
meets the leaders of Spain and Britain and says that March 17
is the last day for a vote on a second Iraq resolution. |
| March 15 |
•
France, Russia and Germany call for UN talks to seek compromise
on time limits set for disarming Iraq. |
| March 14 |
Iraq submits a new report to the United Nations
on VX nerve gas and says a report on anthrax will follow. |
| March 13 |
•
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri dismisses British proposals
for a revised draft resolution, saying they amount to a plan
for war. |
| March 10 |
•
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns Washington without Security
Council backing a war to disarm Iraq would violate the world
body's
charter.
•
Britain says it would be prepared to modify a draft resolution,
with a
timetable of detailed disarmament moves. |
| March 7 |
• Blix delivers new report to the Security
Council saying Iraq has made some progress but has still not
cleared up key questions about chemical
and biological weapons programmes.
• The United States, Britain and Spain present a revised
draft resolution
giving Saddam an ultimatum to disarm by March 17 or face the
possibility of war.
• France says it cannot accept the March 17 ultimatum. |
| Feb 28 |
• Iraq says it will obey UN orders to destroy
its al-Samoud 2 missiles. It crushes four the next day. |
| Feb 24 |
• Blix delivers a list of some 30 unresolved
questions about Iraqi disarmament in preparation for his report.
• United States, Britain and Spain introduce a new draft
resolution
declaring Iraq has squandered its "final opportunity"
to disarm. A French
counter-proposal, endorsed by Germany and Russia, calls for
more UN
inspections. |
| Feb 14 |
• The chief inspectors brief the Security
Council. |
| Feb 12 |
• A panel of experts brought in by UN inspectors
finds Iraq's al- Samoud 2 missiles exceed the range allowed
by Security Council resolutions. |
| Feb 10 |
• Iraq agrees unconditionally to flights
over its territory by U-2 spy planes, a key demand of weapons
inspectors. |
| Feb 9 |
• Blix and his team end two days of disarmament
talks with Iraq and
receive more documents. |
| Feb 5 |
• US Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses
the United Nations,
laying out what he says is evidence of Iraq's ongoing weapons
of mass
destruction programmes. He says Iraq is in "further material
breach" of UN
resolutions. |
| Jan 30 |
• ElBaradei says Iraq is not as yet in
material breach of UN resolution on disarmament. |
| Jan 28 |
• Bush vows in his State of the Union speech
to use the full force of the US military against Iraq if needed
and says Iraq has shown "utter contempt" for the United
Nations. |
| Jan 28 |
• Britain declares Iraq in "material
breach" of UN resolutions and says the chances of averting
war are receding. |
| Jan 27 |
• Blix and International Atomic Energy
Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei
report to the Security Council, outlining gaps in information
that Iraq has
delivered. Blix says the gaps could not lead him to conclude
that Baghdad has banned arms. |
| Jan 16 |
• Blix says UN inspectors have found illegally
imported conventional arms materials in Iraq and only fuller
cooperation with his team could avert war. |
| Jan 9 |
• Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix
says his inspection teams have found no "smoking gun",
but Baghdad has failed to answer "many uestions"
about its arms programmes. |
| Dec 19 |
• US Ambassador John Negroponte says omissions
from Iraq's declaration are a "material breach" of
resolution 1441. |
| Dec 7 |
• Iraq hands a 12,000-page declaration
of its arms programmes to UN
inspectors. |
| Nov 27 |
• UN inspectors complete their first field
mission in Iraq in four years. |
| Nov 8 |
• Security Council unanimously approves
resolution giving Iraq last chance to eliminate banned weapons
or face "serious consequences". Iraq accepts
UN resolution 1441 unconditionally on November 13. |
| Oct 12 |
• An adviser to Saddam writes to UN inspectors,
saying Iraq is ready to remove all obstacles to their return. |
| Sept 24 |
• Iraq offers UN inspectors "unfettered
access" to establish the truth after Britain publishes
a dossier that Iraq has banned weapons. Baghdad dismisses the
document as lies. |
| Sept 12 |
• Bush urges UN to force Iraq to disarm
and says action would be inevitable if Baghdad failed to do
so. |
| Jan 30 |
• US President George W. Bush brands Iraq,
Iran and North Korea members of an "axis of evil"
for developing weapons of mass destruction. All three deny the
charge. |
| April 3 |
• Iraq says UN sanctions cause death of
1,471,425 people since
August 1990. |
| Dec 17 |
• US and Britain launch air strikes. |
| Dec 16 |
• UN inspectors withdraw from Baghdad. |
| Aug 9 |
• Inspectors suspend visits to new sites
after Baghdad decides to
halt cooperation with the United Nations. |
| Dec 10 |
• UN oil-for-food deal comes into effect,
allowing Iraq to sell $2
billion worth of oil over six months to buy humanitarian supplies
for its
people. |
| July 1 |
• Iraq admits for first time it has biological
weapons. |
| March 19 |
• Iraq declares existence of previously
undeclared ballistic missiles, chemical weapons and related
material. Says these were destroyed in
1991. |
| June 9 |
• UN inspectors begin chemical weapons checks. |
| April 11 |
• UN declares Gulf War ceasefire after
Iraq's acceptance of terms set down in resolution 687. The resolution
calls for Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction to be scrapped
and part of its oil revenues to be used for war
reparations. |
| Feb 28 |
• US and allied forces cease fire. |
US strongly condemns Al-Qaeda's Obama insult