Iraq UN inspections

by pv vivekanand

AN advance team of UN weapons inspectors heads for Iraq tomorrow on what is definitely the most important mission undertaken by the UN this millennium but weighed down by the realisation that the world's sole superpower wants them to fail in their mission - and their failure means a devastating war that could reshape the Middle East.
The advance team will include 30 experts and they will be followed by 20 others on Nov.27. Others will join them in the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline for Iraq to make a voluntary disclosure of all its weapons programmes.
The Iraqi disclosure will be matched against data provided by US intelligence agencies and by other UN member states, but what would really matter would be the US furnished details and, indeed, the findings of the UN team between now and Dec.8 from surprise inspections and interviews with Iraqi scientists, engineers and army officers involved in the country's military industry.
It might be easier for the experts to approve the Iraqi data as accurate than disproving the US-provided details as inaccurate because the latter carries with it a threat that Washington would undertake unilateral military action against Iraq if it felt the UN inspectors were not doing their job properly.
It is no secret that parallel to pushing through the UN Security Council the key resolution that dictated a "last-chance" opportunity for Iraq to come clean with its weapons programme, the US has also been setting in place a mechanism that pre-empts any possibility that Baghdad could successfully manoeuvre through the elaborate but hidden traps in the resolution.
There is no question of what if Baghdad meets every condition and requirement laid down by the UN weapons inspectors since Washington has reserved for itself the role of the final and absolute judge; even if the UN team issues a super-clean certificate to Iraq, it would only be torn apart by the US, whose scenario does not provide for Saddam Hussein continuing in power in Baghdad. Any success of the UN inspectors succeed in disarming Iraq is bad news for the administration of US President George W. Bush since it would make it difficult justify its aim of removing Saddam Hussein.
It would be a political disaster for Bush to go to re-election in the 2004 with Saddam still in power in Baghdad.
The hardliners surrounding Bush were actually disappointed that Saddam not only accepted Resolution 1441 but also told his people to co-operate with the UN inspectors.
His foreign minister, Sabri Naji, told the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, and Mohammed Al Bardei, head of the he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), during their two-day visit to Baghdad last week that the Iraqi government would extend to them complete co-operation. Naji also removed a final thorn when he conveyed to Blix his government's acceptance of "no-notice" UN inspections of "presidential sites" in the country.
Such Iraqi gestures are downplayed by the US hardliners, who argue that Saddam Hussein has no intention of coming clean and meeting the UN demands and would only continue a cat-and-mouse game with the UN inspectors, trying to outguess them and outsmart them. That is the very framework for the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline.
There is no argument either that Saddam is prompted by a guitly conscience and is all eager to make up by pleasing the UN. Accepting the UN demands, which Saddam and others around him see as the depth of humiliation for the Iraqi leadership and people, in good faith does not fit into Saddam's track record, but the Iraqi leader seems to have clearly understood that he had no choice but to comply with Resolution 1441 or face war that would be his end. Otherwise, Baghdad would have never agreed that UN inspectors could visit Saddam's palaces at will without prior notice and go through every knook and corner of the structure; for the Iraqis, and most people for that matter, it is the ultimate humiliation.
Bush and other US officials are trying to twist the knife in the Iraqi wound by repeatedly warning Saddam not to conceal any weapon-related information and threatening that his "final days" could be near hoping it would produce a knee-jerk Iraqi reaction that would suit Washington's interests of seeing the UN inspection fail.
The American bait of a new life in the US for some 500 Iraqi scientists who worked with their country's military programmes is part of the American gameplan.
As such, the UN inspectors bear the heavy burden of having to carry out their mission knowing well that their success might not amount to much in terms of averting a war against Iraq.
The technicalities of their work are complex. Indeed, they are armed with wide UN authorisation to make demands at will on the Iraqi government, but finding concrete evidence of Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction and contradict Iraq's expected disclosures could be a difficult if not impossible task.
On the nuclear front, the IAEA said in 1998 that it had bust an Iraqi programme to build an atomic weapon after IAEA experts combed the country. It informed the UN Security Council that all material which could go into producing a nuclear weapon was removed from Baghdad and that the country no longer possessed the ability to renew its nuclear project even in the medium term. However, the US vetoed an IAEA certification that would have closed Iraq's nuclear file.
A hypothesis says that Iraq could have focused on developing a "dirty bomb" -- nuclear material detonated by conventional explosives causing limited but deadly damage to human life and nature in the immediate environment. But to locate such "dirty bombs" would not be easy since they leave little traces of tell-tale radiation.
On the missile front, previous UN inspections have accounted for all but less than half a dozen long-range missiles that Iraq had known to have acquired from the then Soviet Union and developed on its own. This was conceded by Australian Richard Butler, who headed the UN Special Commission which became defunct four years ago, after he paid several visits to Baghdad in mid-1997.
On the two other fronts -- chemical and biological weapons -- the scene is murky. Without actually discovering allegedly hidden caches of such weapons and components, some which have civilian as well as military use, the UN inspectors would only have conjectures and no physical evidence to support any charge. Again, it would be the US intelligence findings, including satellite information and details of Iraqi imports of "dual-purpose" materials -- that would have the final say in the matter; again a deadly trap for Baghdad.
The US has further armed itself by describing Iraqi defiance of Western patrolling of "no-fly" zones in Iraq -- Iraqi fixed wing aircraft are not supposed to fly beyond the 36th parallel in the north and 32nd parallel in the south -- as "material breach" of Resolution 1441. However, Russia, China and France as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have rejected the assertion since there is no UN Security Council authorisation for American and British warplanes to carry out reconnaissance flights in Iraqi airspace.
At the same time, American insistence on its argument is defintely going to be part of Washington's case for war against Iraq.
Seen from the UN inspectors' perspective -- barring perhaps that of the 27 Americans among them -- they are the foot soliders in an immediate war of wits, pitting their boss Blix against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the forefront of the hardliners in Washington who include Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condaleesa Rice and several top officials at the Pentagon.
The UN inspectors, who have no little means of gathering information except their field work and interviews, need more than prayers for success in their mission; and indeed the Washington hardliners' prayers for their failure is backed by the economic, political and military might of the world's superpower, which also boasts of the best intelligence-gathering capability.