Iraq: Cautious Clinton to keep force in Gulf

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton broke a 12-hour silence yesterday to give tentative approval to the UN-brokered deal with Iraq, claiming the agreement was a victory for "diplomacy ... backed by strength and resolve". But he announced that US forces would remain in the Gulf until Washington was assured that Iraq was fulfilling its undertakings and threatened "serious consequences" should Iraq fail to comply.

Speaking from the Oval Office, flanked by senior members of his Administration and the chief- of-staff, General Henry Shelton, Mr Clinton said that Iraq had agreed to provide UN weapons inspectors with "immediate, unrestricted and unconditional access to all suspect sites".

"If fully implemented," Mr Clinton said, "and that is the big if - this commitment will allow the UN weapons inspection commission, Unscom, to fulfil its mission: first, to find and destroy all of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; second, to find and destroy the missiles to deliver those weapons, and third, to institute a system for long-term monitoring to make sure Iraq does not build more."

Mr Clinton's statement, which was delayed by half an hour while he held additional consultations with advisers, offered the first firm details of the agreement that was reached by the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, during three hours of talks with the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad on Sunday.

According to Mr Clinton, Iraq is now prepared to provide full access to all sites, including the eight presidential compounds hitherto declared off-limits, as well as a number of so-called "sensitive" sites also bared to inspectors. He confirmed that weapons teams inspecting the "presidential" sites would be accompanied by diplomats from countries comprising the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and said that this was acceptable to the United States.

The President gave no indication of what else Mr Annan might have offered Iraq in return for this agreement, although he did reiterate US support for the enhanced "oil- for-food" deal, the UN-sponsored arrangement that allows Iraq to sell a fixed amount of oil with the proceeds earmarked for humanitarian and infrastructure projects in Iraq. The new arrangements, more than doubling the amount of oil Iraq may sell, were approved by the Security Council at the end of last week.

Clearly anticipating domestic criticism that it was the US and not Iraq that had blinked, Mr Clinton was careful to spell out US objectives in mounting its show of force in the Gulf and to establish that it was Iraq that had backed down. The US purpose, he said, had been to secure "free and unfettered access" for UN weapons inspectors and to secure a long- term monitoring regime. Iraq, for its part, had promised full access to its sites "for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War".

Mr Clinton also stressed the need for continued vigilance and testing of Iraq's good faith. "I intend to keep our forces at high levels of preparation," he warned, and said if Iraq did not keep its word this time, "everyone in the United States and its allies will recognise that the US has the right to respond".

From Congress, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, called for "very significant penalties" for future non- compliance to be built into any new UN resolution on Iraq.