Iraq sees hope for end to sanctions

RICHARD BUTLER, head of the United Nations team monitoring the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, has said in Baghdad that he hopes outstanding issues will be resolved in the next two months. He said agreement has been reached with the Iraqi government on the inspection process.

It is all very different in tone from Mr Butler's previous visits. Standing next to Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, Mr Butler said: "Mr Aziz and I will take stock on 9 August, and it is my earnest hope that when we do that we will be looking at a slate which has been pretty well ticked off."

Previously, Iraq routinely denounced Mr Butler, the former Australian ambassador to the UN, as no more than an American agent, determined to prevent economic sanctions on Iraq being lifted by always demanding fresh information on its biological, chemical, nuclear and missile programmes.

Only last week, the Iraqi newspaper Babal, controlled by Uday, the elder son of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, said, in reference to Mr Butler that it was time to "stop courting this mad dog".

It even suggested, continuing the analogy, that, abandoning Iraqi traditions of tolerance and courtesy, "the time has come to chop off the tongue of this dog".

The sudden amity between Mr Butler and Mr Aziz is hard to explain. But both sides are on their best behaviour. The critical moment for Iraq will be Mr Butler's next report in October on Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions on eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

Baghdad wants to show to sympathetic members of the Security Council that it has done all in its power to meet the demands of the UN Special Committee (Unscom) on weapons of mass destruction, which Mr Butler heads.

Mr Butler, for his part, was criticised by Russia and France during the last crisis between Iraq and the UN in February for his belligerent rhetoric towards Iraq. At one moment he even implied that Baghdad might attack Israel and raze Tel Aviv.

His more moderate approach during his present visit to Iraq may not necessarily lead to a clean bill of health for Iraq in October.

After the UN envoy delivered his last, very negative, report on Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions in April, General Amr al-Saadi, adviser to President Saddam on Unscom, told The Independent: "The role played by Butler to serve American policy against Iraq is worse than any role played by an ordinary spy." He said the April report implied that Iraq had done nothing to eliminate its weapons since 1991.

General Saadi said one of the problems for Iraq was that in 1995 it handed over relevant documents on its weapons programmes secreted to the UN by General Hussein Kamel, who defected to Jordan.

"We don't have a copy," Saadi said. "We don't know what the documents say. They (Unscom) come up with selective quotes from them, which we haven't seen before. The papers provide a gold mine for procrastination."

The US and Britain are eager to maintain sanctions on Iraq, but not to repeat the confrontation of February. The US is scaling down its task force in the Gulf, which was dispatched with much fanfare at the beginning of the year. One aircraft carrier and Stealth bombers have been withdrawn.

Officials in Washington say they are prepared to be more flexible in allowing Iraq to spend money for humanitarian and development purposes, so long as they can prevent Saddam Hussein from gaining control of cash inflows from Iraq's oil revenues. These are limited to $4bn every six months by the lack of spare parts for the Iraqi oil industry.