POLITICS-UN: No Signs of Thaw on Iraq

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 23 1999 (IPS) - Accusations by a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq that the United States had placed spies with Iraqi inspection teams will do little to end the standoff between Washington and other U.N. members, diplomats said here..

Relations between the White House and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have been frosty for months over Iraq, particularly since U.S. officials accused Annan’s aides of leaking information last month about the links between U.S. intelligence agencies and the inspectors, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM).

Now a book to be published soon by former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, actually expands on those accusations.

Ritter, a former U.S. military officer, claims that as many as nine Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials worked with UNSCOM at the same time that a coup plot was hatched against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The book, ‘Endgame’ – set to appear in April – does not make any clear links between the presence of the nine CIA agents in Iraq and the failed coup attempt, which was quickly crushed in June 1996. But Ritter, a critic of U.N. and U.S. policy on Iraq, says that “there was a strong set of coincidences”.

“The inspection was directed almost exclusively at Special Republican Guard sites; the coup plotters were from some of the same units we were trying to inspect,” Ritter argues in an excerpt from the book, reprinted in The New York Times.

At a time when UNSCOM’s work in Iraq has been criticised from several quarters, such accusations of CIA involvement in attempts to overthrow Hussein are seen here as a crippling blow to UNSCOM.

Many diplomats doubt that the weapons inspectors, who have been denied entry into Iraq since U.S. and British planes launched four days of attacks last December, can return to their work unless their mandate is changed.

French President Jacques Chirac has suggested ending the UN sanctions on Iraq, in effect since August 1990, and replacing UNSCOM’s current intrusive inspections with a less aggressive system of long-term weapons monitoring.

France, Russia and China – three of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members – back this approach, and sources say Annan largely accepts it.

Yet with a review of Iraq’s relations with the United Nations expected in mid-April, there is no consensus on how to ensure that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled completely. The United States and Britain remain convinced that only continued sanctions and the return of UNSCOM can contain the Iraqi military threat.

The espionage claims, however, have hurt Washington’s cause badly at the United Nations. Iraq now stands vindicated in its accusations that UNSCOM is biased against it, and that U.S. members of the weapons inspectors have tried to overthrow Hussein.

Ironically, Ritter – whom Baghdad accused of being a CIA agent and who has claimed that the United Nations has given up on its disarmament goals in Iraq – has now buttressed those charges.

That leaves the United Nations in a delicate position. Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim has formed a panel of experts, which includes UNSCOM Deputy Chief Charles Duelfer and UN Under- Secretary-General for Disarmament Jayantha Dhanapala, to report by Apr. 15 on Iraq’s cooperation with disarmament issues.

The panel, dominated by UNSCOM officials, is likely to give a harsh appraisal of Baghdad’s cooperation – yet Russia and France, among others, are unwilling to allow a resumption of UNSCOM under its previous structure regardless of the panel’s views.

At the same time, few diplomats believe that the report would find enough disarmament progress to allow a quick lifting of sanctions, which many Council member states would clearly prefer.

The low esteem that UNSCOM now enjoys was made clear by the delay in publishing evaluation reports sent by UNSCOM chairman Richard Butler last month to the Council.

Russia objected to the release of the reports, with Ambassador Sergey Lavrov dismissing them as “nothing new”. Butler responded by criticising Lavrov’s credibility in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Butler was conspicuously absent from Amorim’s advisory panel on Iraq, although his deputy Duelfer – who is from the United States – and other top UNSCOM officials were included.

The chill has extended to the overall relationship between Annan, who was backed by Washington in his candidacy for the UN top spot in 1996, and the White House.

Annan began a two-day trip to Washington Tuesday to meet with Congressional leaders and National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, but UN officials downplayed any talk that Annan would discuss Iraq.

The only thing that is clear about the future UN policy on Iraq is that, until it takes shape, Baghdad can expect near-daily scuffles with U.S. and British jets patrolling two “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq.

Since the December attacks, Iraqi air defenses have repeatedly locked on to the U.S. and British jets, which have responded by firing missiles in what increasingly appears to be a low-level war.