Seventeen Unmovic trainees have just finished a course in Argentina. Good. Now we have 17 more inspectors who are ready, willing, and able to conduct a mission that will never take place.

Unmovic is one of the least obscure in the United Nations alphabet soup of acronyms. For a while, on the eve of the Iraq war, every word uttered by its chairman, that smiling Swede, Hans Blix, was pored over by world scholars as if it was a modern-day Talmud.

Since then, however, it has become a classic U.N. institution operating on its own inertia. If generals try to win the previous war, at the U.N. – where periodic Security Council meetings are to this date are titled “The Situation between Iraq and Kuwait” – they are still trying to appease the war before last.

That is too bad. Unmovic, with a competent staff of 50 scientists and experts, and some 300 people available on call, can become a very useful tool in the growing need for nonproliferation of dangerous weapons in places like Syria or Iran. The team’s unique expertise is wasted as its members sit around and rewrite the same Iraq files over and over again. Until last November, Unmovic was funded by proceeds from Iraq’s oil sales. It is in good financial shape with some $200 million in its treasury, which could sustain it for over two years of vigorous, Iraq-like inspections.

“I can send 20 or 30 people to Libya within 10 days if there is a resolution requiring it,” the current Unmovic top man, Demetrius Perricos, told me last winter, shortly after Muammar Gadhafi announced his intention to disarm. No such resolution is coming anytime soon.

Why?

Unmovic, the U.N. monitoring, verification, and inspection commission, was formed in December 1999. It replaced the special commission on Iraq, or Unscom, which had a clearer mandate and a much more aggressive team that really tried to unarm Iraq, as opposed to averting a war against it.

Both teams existed for one purpose: to make sure Iraq cooperated with council resolutions telling Saddam to get rid of all his chemical and biological weapons and his missiles ranging over 93 miles. They were formed to complement the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based body charged with assuring that Iraq remains nuclear-free.

But unlike the IAEA’s global mandate, Unmovic was charged with Iraq and Iraq only. Despite international treaties against the spread of biological and chemical arms, no permanent body exists to monitor that proliferation, or that of long-range missiles.

As the March 2003 war neared, the acrimony between the Bush administration and Mr. Blix was apparent, and shortly after the war Mr. Blix was gone. By that time, it was clear that America had zero interest in allowing U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq.

Instead, Washington formed its own Iraq Survey Group, an all-American team currently headed by the former Unscom deputy chairman, Charles Duelfer. Mr. Duelfer is going to report his latest findings to Congress in the next few weeks. His testimony is bound to reignite the political debate over whether Saddam’s Iraq had the potential to become a military menace on the eve of the war. Unmovic could refute or verify the ISG findings.

All of which might be very interesting to future historians or current political debaters, but at the cost of $1 million a month, the existence of the team for the sole purpose of such polemics is hardly a good bang for the buck. Since its Iraq days are clearly over, any competent institution would quickly determine whether to use Unmovic, or lose it.

Not this one. At the Security Council last week, Russia insisted inspectors would have to go back to Iraq one day. Moscow, in other words, would never allow the team to be disbanded. On the other hand Pakistan, for obvious reasons, wanted assurances that Unmovic would not operate anywhere outside Iraq – where America does not want it.

Iraq may one day become a beacon of democracy where weapons arsenals are a bad memory of the past. Or it might revert to its old menacing, dictatorial, armed to the teeth self. Whatever the outcome, Unmovic will probably remain a reminder that old U.N. institutions never die. They just become obsolete.