Iraq Ordered to Obey Gulf War Terms at Once

The Security Council, while noting a muting in the stubborn tone of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s special envoy on Thursday, rejected his arguments and ordered Iraq to take steps immediately to comply with the resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.

After listening to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz in two days of unusual, dramatic sessions, the council--in a unanimously approved statement read by its president, Diego Arria of Venezuela--said it “hopes that the goodwill expressed by (Aziz) will be matched by deeds.”

The action appeared to postpone, at least for a week or two, a test over whether Hussein will persist in his refusal to allow U.N. inspectors to oversee the destruction of machinery and equipment used in the manufacture of Scud ballistic missiles.

Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission charged with the elimination of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile warfare programs, told a news conference that he would send a team of ballistic missile inspectors into Iraq next week. But he said he has not yet decided whether this team should supervise the disputed destruction or whether he would send in a second team some time later to do the job.

In any case, Ekeus said, the Iraqis “will have to give in 100%. If they do not, we will report back to the council, and there will be a stalemate.”

As the uncertainties persisted at the United Nations, the U.S. aircraft carrier America and five smaller warships steamed into the Persian Gulf within striking distance of Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.

The United States has maintained a steady naval presence in the Gulf since the war’s end, but no carrier had been inside the Gulf for more than two weeks. Officials said that more than 100 U.S. warplanes, including more than a dozen F-117 stealth fighters and dozens of other fighter-bombers, remain in Saudi Arabia and conduct regular training operations with Gulf forces.

Although Aziz dropped his truculent, uncompromising tone in his second day with the Security Council, there was little in the substance of his remarks to indicate that Iraq intended to give in completely, especially on the key issue of allowing the United Nations to mount a continuing inspection of the country even after all its weapons programs are eliminated.

Aziz, in fact, conditioned his expressions of goodwill and cooperation on the need to protect the sovereignty, security and internal affairs of Iraq.

“Iraq does not negotiate its sovereignty or independence,” he said, his voice rising almost in anger. “We are ready to cooperate with the Security Council, with the Special Commission, with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said. “But we are not bargaining our sovereignty. We are not bargaining over our freedom to live, a people who have lived in freedom for 6,000 years.”

This flurry of eloquence probably revealed more about the conflict between Iraq and the United Nations than the argument over whether the inspectors had the right to demand the destruction of hydraulic presses, computers and lathes at a ballistic missile factory.

Throughout his two days in the council, Aziz decried numerous infringements on the sovereignty of Iraq. Yet the U.N. resolutions maintaining economic sanctions and calling for the destruction of Iraq’s military power have to be, almost by definition, an imposition upon the sovereignty of a defeated Iraq--much like the American occupation after World War II was an imposition upon the sovereignty of Japan.

After Aziz’s closing remarks to the council, his two main antagonists, U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering and British Ambassador David Hannay, told the council that they detected some hope--but mostly evasion--in the words of the Iraqi.

“Once again we hear that Iraq wants to meet and negotiate,” Pickering said. “But there must be no provisos and preconditions. These are mandatory resolutions. They must be complied with in full.”

Hannay noted a new willingness to cooperate but said that most of Aziz’s replies to the council’s questions “were, frankly, evasive.”

Although most attention at the United Nations focused on the forthcoming test in Iraq over the destruction of machinery and other equipment in the missile factories, a second test could come a few weeks later over a nuclear weapons plant at Atheer in Iraq. Since the U.S. military did not identify it as a nuclear operation during the Gulf War, it was not bombed extensively.

Pickering told the council on Wednesday that the site “can in no way be considered to have any other purpose than weapons making, and, therefore, should be immediately and completely destroyed.”

But Hans Blix, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has conducted the nuclear inspections of Iraq, told reporters that his agency has not yet decided whether to destroy the plant, which was, perhaps, 18 to 24 months way from producing its first bomb when the Gulf War began. He said he does not know when a decision will be made but noted that he plans to send his next team of inspectors into Iraq in April.

Pickering’s underscoring of Atheer led some analysts to speculate that the United States intended to bomb the plant, should Iraq persist in defying the U.N. resolutions. If the Bush Administration chooses to respond with force, Defense Department officials said that such action would almost certainly be limited to air strikes against facilities such as Atheer, known to be involved in Iraq’s programs of weapons of mass destruction. They added that Saudi Arabia’s reticence to allow the use of its territory for renewed hostilities could make a carrier-based strike the most probable scenario.

Marvin Feuerwerger, military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that mounting pressure from the Gulf War’s victors may be goading Hussein to further resistance. “Saddam might calculate that the worst that will happen to him at this point is we will destroy from the air what we want to destroy on the ground,” he said.

In Washington, officials said that Iraq has begun to rebuild its shattered air defense network by consolidating radar and electrical equipment, which had been scattered across the country.

In his final presentation, Aziz seemed at his most cooperative when he promised to reopen negotiations with Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali over a resolution that allows Iraq to sell a small amount of oil, provided that the United Nations controls the proceeds to ensure that most of it is used to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people. Iraq has refused to go along with the resolution, denouncing it as an infringement upon its sovereignty.

Meisler reported from the United Nations, and Healy reported from Washington.