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Iraq set to head off attack with offer of arms inspections

David Usborne
Saturday 31 August 2002 00:00 BST
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Iraq is urgently pursuing a multi-pronged campaign to fend off for as long as possible any strike by the United States by appealing to Arab solidarity and exploiting doubts in European capitals.

Iraq is countering Washington's daily drumbeat of war-talk with its own barrage of anti-American rhetoric. Similar broadsides are aimed at the United Nations and the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix. But Iraq is also carefully keeping the door ajar on making diplomatic headway.

What sometimes seems like a muddled message from Iraq conceals the regime's complicated game. While stoking Arab anger against America is important, Iraq also has one vital card it wants to preserve: the prospect of a return of the weapons inspectors.

The duality of its strategy was evident even during a visit to Syria and Lebanon by the Iraqi Vice-President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, at the end of the week. On Thursday, Mr Ramadan said that statements from his US counterpart, Dick Cheney, dismissing the usefulness of the inspectors meant that any discussion of their return was rendered pointless.

"The US administration ... says day and night that the issue is not related to whether the inspectors return or not, it has to do with changing the regime by force," he said. "This is an issue on which we shouldn't waste our time."

Mr Ramadan cautioned the United States yesterday not to underestimate the military challenge of deposing Saddam Hussein, saying it would not be as simple an operation as ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan had proved. "We don't want to compare the two; Iraq is not Afghanistan."

Yet, just hours earlier while visiting a town in northern Syria, he took a quite different tone, this time with his European audience in mind. "There is still room for diplomatic solutions to avert a war with the United States," he said.

The question of a return of weapons inspectors, who have not been allowed in Iraq since they left in December 1998, is far from dead. Hawks in Washington hoping for war would surely prefer that it were – a fact Iraq is very keenly aware of. On the face of it, negotiations with the UN on allowing Mr Blix, head of the UN Monitoring and Verification Mission (Unmovic), to redeploy inspectors appear to be deadlocked following a flurry of letters back and forth earlier this month.

The stand-off centres on Iraq's request, outlined in two letters to the secretary general, Kofi Annan, that further "technical talks" occur before the inspection teams go in. Baghdad also presented 19 detailed questions that it wants the UN Security Council to answer.

But UN Security Council resolutions demand that Iraq give the inspectors unconditional and unfettered access. Nor did the US show any patience with the list of Iraqi questions. Baghdad asked, for instance, if the council could "guarantee" that the inspectors would not double as spies for the Americans. It also wanted to know how long the inspections would take.

Iraq's visceral distaste for the inspection system – the UN has stated for over 10 years that sanctions introduced after the incursion into Kuwait will be lifted only after Iraq is certified free of weapons of mass destruction – cannot be understated. It is now freely admitted that the US piggybacked espionage operations on to the work of Unscom, the inspection division that was the controversial predecessor of Unmovic.

But Iraq also knows that the inspection issue may offer it the only means of delaying, if not reversing, America's momentum towards military action.

Notwithstanding the obfuscations of recent weeks, Iraq could eventually bring itself to invite the inspectors in. To do so could further divide the Europeans from Washington. Russia and China, both veto-holding Security Council members, would argue that such an invitation was a sign that the diplomatic route was reopened and that military steps by the US would therefore be unforgivable. At the least, it would create new problems for President George Bush.

Richard Murphy, the former under-secretary of state who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, argues: "They are thinking about restarting the old game of inspections and that they can somehow outwit the Europeans by bamboozling them into creating a firewall between them [the Iraqis] and the Americans. I expect to hear a more direct statement of willingness to have free and unfettered inspections."

Iraq will time the issuance of such an invitation with extreme care – when America seems to be on the very brink of military steps. Should the inspectors indeed return, much will ride on their experience once inside Iraq.

Mr Murphy does not believe that Baghdad would actually be serious about co-operating with them. "They don't want them there," he added. But their return could buy Iraq time. And if enough time passes, so might the moment for an American attack.

Iraq's concern, however, for additional talks on what the inspectors will do may not be entirely spurious, because allowing them in would create a new risk. They will be worried that, as was so often the case with inspection missions before 1998, things might go awry on the ground.

Any confrontation between Iraqi officials and the inspectors or any signal from Mr Blix that the teams are meeting resistance could instead give Washington an additional pretext to launch military action.

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