Bloomberg September 19, 2002
UN Inspectors May Need a Year to Assess Iraqi Threat
Washington, Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- United Nations inspectors
might need up to a year in Iraq to size up its weapons threat,
inspectors and analysts said, a timetable that may clash with U.S.
demands that Saddam Hussein quickly disarm or face an attack.
Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix discussed the situation
today with the United Nations Security Council, following the
receipt Monday of an Iraqi letter allowing inspectors to return
without conditions.
A timeline Blix gave the Security Council said inspectors
will arrive in Baghdad on Oct. 15 and take about two months to get
the necessary airplanes, helicopters, computers and other
equipment in place.
Then, according to a UN resolution passed in 1999, Blix and
his team have 60 days to prepare a ``program of work,'' an
assessment of their disarmament tasks, and present it to the
Security Council. If the work plan is accepted, Blix would have
120 days to report to the UN on whether Iraq was complying with
inspections.
The U.S. ``would be pretty displeased if the Iraqis look
cross-eyed at the inspectors -- we'd yank them out and start
bombing,'' said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a
defense policy organization based in Alexandria, Virginia.
The UN inspections team has a list of about 700 sites in the
country that were examined in the past or had ``dual-use''
equipment, machinery that has civilian uses and could also help
build chemical, biological or nuclear arms, Buchanan said.
Talks Scheduled
UN diplomats called for the world body to wait for talks
scheduled for the week of Sept. 30 in Vienna between Blix, Iraqi
representatives and members of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.
``Now that things are moving in the right direction, let's
leave it to Blix,'' Chinese Deputy Ambassador Chen Xu said
yesterday.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky
said inspectors would likely work for as much as a year before
``countries will have a clear idea on whether Iraq is
cooperating.''
Instruments Improve
The nuclear inspectors, empowered to work alongside the UN
Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, have more
precise instruments and have had the chance to study data on Iraq
since the last round of checks in 1998, Jacques Baute, the head of
the team, said in Vienna, according to Agence France-Presse.
Unmovic is the successor to United Nations Special
Commission, or Unscom, which was disbanded in 1999 after its teams
declared that Iraq was uncooperative and left the country in
December 1998 before a U.S.-U.K. bombing campaign.
While UN arms inspectors are making plans to go back to Iraq,
U.S. leaders including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said they doubted their inspections
would be effective.
Hussein's ``regime has in place an elaborate organized system
of denial and deception to frustrate both inspectors and outside
intelligence efforts,'' Rumsfeld said in congressional testimony
yesterday.
``The goal is not inspections,'' he said. ``The goal is
disarmament.''
A Western diplomat whose country has a seat on the Security
Council told a group of reporters yesterday that his government is
pushing for an unspecified deadline to be imposed on the Vienna
talks to be completed as well as a deadline for the return of
inspectors, possibly set for the end of October.
David Kay, who led the UN investigations in 1991 and 1992,
also has cast doubt on their value. ``I don't see any set of
circumstances that will give you a reliable inspections process,''
he told Bloomberg News earlier this month. ``The only alternative
is regime change.''
Bush Demands
U.S. President George W. Bush demanded last week the UN
enforce its resolutions or else the U.S. would take action against
the regime. Bush's stated policy is to topple Hussein.
Bush highlighted Iraq's non-compliance in his speech at the
UN General Assembly last week, calling leader Saddam Hussein's
behavior ``a decade of defiance.''
``It's crystal clear, that if you know anything about how
Iraq has behaved, they will fight this every step of the way,''
Eliot Cohen, a former member of the Defense Department's policy
planning staff and now a professor at the Johns Hopkins
University's School of Advanced International Studies, said.
``There's no serious prospect of having serious inspections.''
Hussein Residences
Hussein, in a past compromise with the UN, was able to
designate ``presidential sites'' where the UN visits had to be
announced and the UN had to tell Iraq what type of experts -
nuclear, chemical, or biological -- were on the investigating
team.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today signaled there
would be no negotiations on access to those residences, which he
tallied as about 30 sites.
Bush administration officials are concerned a lengthy
inspections timetable would leave U.S. military planning for an
invasion in limbo, the Washington Post reported yesterday, citing
unidentified officials.
--Todd Zeranski in Washington, (202) 624-1864, or
tzeranski@bloomberg.net, with reporting by Bill Varner at the
United Nations and Richard Keil and Heidi Przybyla in Washington,
through the Washington newsroom. Editor: DeMarco, *Getler
*O'Connell.
Copyright 2002 Bloomberg
