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Iraq's acceptance defuses crisis

IRAQ'S ACCEPTANCE OF the United Nations Security Council resolution 1441 — and thereby its acquiescence in the resumption of weapons inspections — has, at least for now, defused a potential international crisis. The letter from Iraq's Foreign Minister, Najis Sabri, to the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, through which this acceptance was conveyed, was not totally unambiguous on the critical question as to whether Baghdad would permit inspection teams to visit any and all sites that they desired to although a relatively minor condition — that at least some of the inspectors should be Arab — appears to have been dealt with en passant. But Baghdad has affirmed that it would cooperate with procedures which adhered to a code of conduct enunciated in an agreement between itself and the Secretary-General, that was struck just as the crisis was peaking in September and October this year and which provides for extensive inspections. Notable in this context is the fact that Baghdad appears to have implicitly indicated that it would not even block the implementation of those procedures that it believes are suspect under international law. Besides its reservations on the legality of these procedures, the only suggestion of reserve in Iraq's statement of its intention to cooperate with the inspection teams lies in its plea that the sovereignty and dignity of the country should be respected. More pertinently, Baghdad has accepted the time-table for the resumption of inspections as per which teams from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will make their first visit to Iraq on November 18.

A clear idea of whether the crisis has indeed abated can only be formed after December 8, the date by which Baghdad has agreed that it will provide detailed information on the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme that it carried out in the past and which it now insists has been fully dismantled. The U. S. administration — which has not entirely shed its desire to use Iraq's non-cooperation with the inspections as the trigger for efforts directed at a regime change in Baghdad — has already stated that it would measure the disclosures to be made by Iraq against the information in its own possession. Washington could well mount a fresh effort to depict Iraq as being in material breach of its obligations to the U.N. if the details to be divulged by Iraq before December 8 fall short of the information that the U. S. claims its intelligence efforts have unearthed. While the U.S. has agreed that any finding that Iraq is in material breach of its obligations will not automatically trigger military action, it is reasonable to presume that Washington will highlight every discrepancy howsoever minor in order to establish Iraq's culpability. It was opportune in this context that Mr. Annan has pointed out that any such finding must be traceable to serious or flagrant attempts to obstruct the inspection teams. Hans Blix who heads UNMOVIC has also underlined that he did not want the Security Council to micro-manage the inspection programme even as he promised to report to it any infractions on the part of Iraq.

Iraq's sincerity in respect of its commitment to dismantle its WMD capability will be tested in the coming months. But the international community will also keenly observe whether the U.S. is willing to abide by the global consensus that the dismantling of Iraq's WMD potential is the sole, not just the main, objective of universal concern. The U. S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has stated that Washington's other objective in regard to Iraq — that of changing the nature of its regime — would be achieved if Baghdad did finally and completely give up its WMD programme. That being so, the rest of the global community must not permit any slackening of the multilateralist imperatives that are currently in operation.

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