By Xinhua
United Nations : The UN Security Council voted on Friday to terminate the UN body that was tasked to search for alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Fourteen members of the 15-member council were in favor of the resolution ending the mandate of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and Russia abstained.
The resolution, sponsored by the United States and Britain, also terminated a similar mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The text reaffirmed Iraq's disarmament obligations and urged the country to continue to implement its "constitutional commitment to the non-proliferation, non-development, non-production and non-use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and associated equipment …"
The council created UNMOVIC in December, 1999 with a mandate to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and to operate a system of ongoing monitoring and verification to ensure that Iraq did not reacquire the same weapons prohibited to it.
UNMOVIC withdrew all its inspectors from Iraq in March 2003, only days before the United States launched invasion to Iraq under the pretext that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and continued to operate outside the country.
The United States and its allies then took over the WMD search, but found nothing to back their excuse to launch the war.
Given the failure to find any proof of the banned weapons, the United States had for the past two years been asking the Security Council to shut down the work of the inspectors.