From Giovanni Carsaniga
According to Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the inspectors cannot prove that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction because “we can’t prove a negative” (16 November, p 10). But any proposition, including a negative one, can be proved true by producing evidence that its positive logical opposite is false.
Thus one can be sure that Smith did not rob the bank if he was elsewhere during the robbery. But this logical relationship is not reversible: one cannot be sure that Smith robbed the bank merely because he lacks a verifiable alibi. That is why the onus of proving guilt affirmatively and positively lies with the prosecution.
It is not clear whether the weapons inspectors are the prosecution or the defence in Iraq. As the prosecution they would be trying to prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The inability to prove that it has none would not be enough to substantiate the charge. On the other hand the absence of evidence that Iraq is arming would not prove that it is not.
Nobody knows what would be acceptable as evidence of disarmament, nor whether evidence considered acceptable on a given date would still be acceptable a month later. Thus Iraq can be accused, whatever it does, of not complying with the UN resolution.
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