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The US, UNSC, UNSCOM, and Iraq

Iraq NewsAUGUST 11, 1998

The central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .

I.  LONDON TIMES, "AMERICA BLOCKS UN SEARCHES FOR IRAQI ARMS," AUG 10
II. UNSC: SUSPENDING INSPECTIONS DID NOT VIOLATE RESOLUTIONS, AFP, AUG 7
III. UNSCOM SUSPENDS INSPECTIONS IN IRAQ, REUTERS, AUG 9
IV.  ARAB LEAGUE SEC GEN CALLS FOR CLOSING WEAPONS FILE, REUTERS, AUG 9
V.   FRANK GAFFNEY, "FROM PAX AMERICANA TO 'PACK UP AMERICANS'," AUG 10
VI.  TOM FRIEDMAN, "FORGIVE AND FORGET," NYT, AUG 11
   The London Times, Aug 10, explained a certain Clinton administration 
maneuver regarding UNSCOM, "The United States is so eager to avoid a new 
military confrontation with Iraq that it has blocked more weapons 
inspections this year than Baghdad.  Diplomatic sources say Washington 
has repeatedly intervened to prevent UN weapons inspectors from mounting 
what it fears could be provocative searches for banned weaponry, 
equipment and documentation in Iraq.  At one point the Clinton 
Administration objected to a plan by the UN Special Commission [UNSCOM] 
to revisit one of the 'presidential sites' that lay at the centre of the 
last crisis with Baghdad.  Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, 
is even said to have intervened personally to urge restraint in a recent 
telephone call to Richard Butler, the UNSCOM chairman." 
   "Iraq News" has heard much the same.  Following the Feb 23 Annan 
accord, supposed to provide UNSCOM with unhindered access, UNSCOM had a 
list of sites it wanted to visit.  But Albright told them to go to the 
defense ministry, as the confrontation had been about access and 
inspecting the defense ministry would establish the principle of access. 
UNSCOM did that and did not go to other sites it had wanted to visit. 
   That is an important example of how the Clinton administration 
operates, when it is in a jam.  It manipulates events from behind the 
scene, "spins" the media, and does what one could scarcely imagine a US 
Gov't doing.
   Israeli Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, spoke Aug 6 at the Nat'l 
Press Club.  He began by describing the Iraq threat, including the 
prospect and implications of an Iraqi nuclear breakout, while delicately 
chiding the administration for its failure to respond to Iraq's Aug 5 
decision to suspend UNSCOM/IAEA  inspections.  Barak said:
   "In '91, at the dawn of the original Gulf crisis, I was a deputy 
commander of the Israeli Defense Forces.  I followed very closely the 
development of the crisis.  Saddam Hussein said to his own people, and 
to the Arab public as a whole, from the very beginning: 'I am going 
historically to win this test of wills.  I cannot defeat in the 
battlefield the armed forces of such an international coalition, but I 
am stronger than the whole coalition together.  I will turn my head 
lower, I will let the storm pass, and I will ultimately, ultimately 
win.'  He is now good at picking and quoting his own words, appealing to 
his public and to the Arab world and asking them where is Gorbachev, 
where is President Bush, where is Maggie Thatcher, where is Mitterand, 
where is Turgut Ozal of Turkey, where is Prime Minister Shamir of 
Israel--all of them out of power.  I am still here and I'm going to 
renew our nonconventional effort and make Iraq what we think, or they 
ought to think, or Saddam thinks, in his distorted mind, it should be.  
   "Now, in terms of any prospect of world order in a situation where we 
have only one superpower, the phenomena of a third-grade dictator 
defying the will of the whole international community led by the United 
States, after such an effort--so costly, not just in terms of financial 
resources--had been launched at him in order to put him at bay and put 
him under control.  If such a dictator can go ahead defying the whole 
world with his nuclear and weapons of mass destruction program, I think 
that the prospect of any world order becomes much, much more 
complicated.
  "I had two visits here into the Oval Office during the crisis while 
the Scuds were still hitting Israel, and to some other capitals in 
Europe.  And let me tell you from my observation, and I suggest to you 
that anyone will make his own judgment from his own experience, what 
would have been the considerations or contemplations in the Oval Office, 
at 10 Downing Street, in d'Elysees, if Saddam would declare that he has 
just two or three simple nuclear devices, the type of which destroyed 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would anyone dare to deploy and fly with 100,000 
sorties over the skies of Iraq?  Would anyone dare to launch a ground 
forces invasion into Iraq?  And what might be the implications if the 
will would not be there to do it?  
  "And I raise this question since we know that no one can erase the 
know-how from the minds of Iraqi scientists and engineers, and 50 and 
few years after Project Manhattan, it is within the reach of third- 
world dictators to produce simple nuclear devices.  I raise this issue, 
since in my judgment in more normal days, may I say, the unilateral 
removal of UNSCOM inspection from Iraq by Saddam Hussein would take the 
headlines, and for good reasons, and would become an issue for top-level 
consultations in all the capitals of the free world."
   On Aug 7, the UNSC met to respond to Iraq's suspension of 
inspections.  The NYT report, Aug 8, charitably described the UNSC 
response as "low key."  As AFP, Aug 7, explained, the UNSC rationalized 
that Iraq's decision had not yet led to any action, and therefore, "the 
decision could not be considered a breach of international law.  As a 
result ... there was no discussion of the 'severest consequences' that 
the council had threatened in March in case of a violation of the 
February 23 agreement."  Rather the UNSC said that Iraq's announcement 
"contravenes the relevant Security Council resolutions and the 
Memorandum of Understanding signed in February by the Secretary-General 
and the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq." 
   Following the UNSC decision, on Aug 9, UNSCOM formally announced it 
was suspending inspections, as Reuters reported.  
   Also, Aug 9, senior administration officials appeared on the Sunday 
talk shows.  Their appearances confirmed the limp US response to Iraq's 
suspension of inspections.  
   Sam Donaldson, on ABC's This Week, asked Sec Def Cohen, "Correct me 
if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, [Saddam's] required to comply--not 
simply say, well, all right, as long as I will accept the sanctions, I 
can go ahead and build weapons of mass destruction and you can't look at 
them.  Don't we need to make him comply?"  Cohen replied, "Well, he will 
have to comply. What we have said-and I've tried to make the point many 
times-it's not simply a matter of the inspectors being turned loose in a 
country that is the size of the state of Wyoming or Idaho, perhaps, but 
allowing them to go around looking at every nook and cranny for evidence 
of weapons of mass destruction."  But there are no UNSCOM inspections 
now.
 Cohen continued, "He has an affirmative obligation to make full 
disclosure. Until he does, he can seek no relief from these sanctions.  
... The next question, if he takes any action to reconstitute his 
weapons of mass destruction, or disrupts the stability or peace in the 
region, then the United States reserves every option to use a military 
option at the time and place of our choosing."
   That is the new policy, "deterrence"--maintain sanctions, or try to, 
and stop Saddam from seizing Kuwait, as Jim Hoagland first explained, 
Apr 23 [see "Iraq News," Apr 30].
   But that raises problems.  Sam Donaldson asked, "If the UN doesn't 
have the ability to inspect, how does it know whether he is 
reconstituting his ability?  Cohen replied, "The United States has 
national means of intelligence gathering that can satisfy us, I believe, 
in terms of whether he is going to provide that kind of a threat that 
would require any military action. " 
  Cokie Roberts said,  "Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, you 
very dramatically held up a bag of sugar and told us that that amount of 
anthrax would wipe out millions of people." Cohen replied, "Right."  
Roberts continued, "And at that point, we had carriers there who were 
ready to attack.  What's the difference now?" 
   Madeleine Albright, on NBC's Meet the Press, spoke similarly.  She 
said, "This, at this stage, is not a problem between Saddam Hussein and 
the US.  It is a problem between Saddam Hussein and the United Nations. 
And the United Nations has to stand up for what it has obliged him to 
do."  Thus, the disarmament of Iraq is a problem for the UN, not the US. 
Albright also said that if Saddam did not let the inspectors do their 
job, "He's thrown away the key to the box he's in.  So he is the loser 
in all this."
   Also, on Aug 9, the Arab League Secretary General, through his 
spokesman, attacked Amb. Butler and said "Iraq has fulfilled all its 
commitments concerning weapons of mass destruction," according to the 
NYT, Aug 10.  The Arab League is based in Egypt; its Secretary General 
is Egyptian; Egypt exercises considerable influence over the Arab League 
Secretariat.  Most probably, the ALSG would not have issued such a 
statement, if Cairo were opposed to it, and perhaps he even made it at 
Cairo's behest.  The Egyptians/Arabs may have been reacting to the 
US/UNSC flaccidity, after Iraq suspended inspections.  But perhaps there 
was something more.  The NYT noted, regarding the Aug 7 Kenya/Tanzania 
bombings, that some Middle East diplomats "suspect a link between Iraqi 
belligerence toward the US and an increasingly acquiescent environment 
for a new round of terrorism by Arab militants."  Perhaps, Egypt, an 
African, as well as Arab, country, and some other Arab members of the 
anti-Saddam coalition, felt intimidated by the bombs and the US 
response-to vow to bring the perpetrators to justice.
   Criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, from the right and 
left, is rising again.  Frank Gaffney, Aug 10, "From Pax American to 
'Pack Up, Americans'," wrote, "History appears increasingly likely to 
remember the Clinton presidency as the era in which the world's only 
superpower lost its grip," before going on to warn, "Saddam Hussein is 
manifestly clambering out of the 'box' in which the administration 
insists he is still confined. The Clinton strategy of relying upon the 
'international community' in general, and the UN Security Council in 
particular, to manage the Iraqi problem has failed... So weak has the US 
position become, so inexorable is the pressure to terminate the Iraqi 
sanctions regime and, therefore, to pretend that Saddam has complied 
with his disarmament obligations, that it is now a matter of time, 
perhaps just weeks, before what is left of the international sanctions 
start coming undone."
   Tom Friedman, Aug 11, "Forgive and Forget," wrote, "In the wake of 
the US embassy bombings in East Africa, the White House kept putting out 
the same sound bite on every network: An unnamed senior official was 
quoted as saying, 'We will not forgive and we will not forget.'  That is 
a noble sentiment.  There is only one problem.  If you look at the 
Clinton Administration's foreign policy over the past two years there 
has been a consistent pattern of forgiving and forgetting.  Where should 
we start?  How about Iraq?  In March, after Saddam Hussein threw out the 
UN inspectors and the US threatened force, the UN Secretary General, 
Kofi Annan, worked out a new arrangement for weapons inspections in 
Iraq. The Clintonites insisted that this new deal be codified in UN 
Security Council Resolution 1154, dated March 2, 1998. That UN 
resolution stated that Iraq had to provide 'immediate, unconditional and 
unrestricted access' to U.N. inspectors, and 'any violation would have 
the severest consequences for Iraq.'  Well, last week the Iraqis 
informed the UN that they were totally 'suspending cooperation' with the 
U.N. inspectors. What was the US response? It sure wasn't the severest 
consequences. 
  "Clinton officials said that all the Iraqis were doing was shooting 
themselves in the foot: by not complying with the UN inspections it 
meant the UN economic sanctions on Iraq would never be lifted. But this 
assumes that Saddam's priority is to get the sanctions lifted. What if 
his real priority is to get rid of the UN inspectors so he can keep his 
remaining weapons of mass destruction? Clinton officials will tell you 
that finding a solution for Saddam is hard, especially with America's 
feckless allies. I agree. But then someone should explain how doing 
nothing advances our interests.... Ms. Albright has all the right 
rhetoric for a Secretary of State with an activist President behind her. 
But activist rhetoric without an activist President looks like empty 
bluster. We end up with all the disadvantages of being the world's 
richest and most powerful nation--everyone makes you a target--without 
any of the advantages, like feeling as though we are shaping world 
events our way.  It seems in recent months as though we have gone from a 
one-superpower world to a no-superpower world, and that is something no 
one should forget or forgive."