Baghdad Expels Americans; U.N. Team Pulls Out

In a fresh challenge to the United Nations and the United States, Iraq on Thursday ejected the six American members of a U.N. disarmament team scouring the country for illegal weapons.

In response, the U.N. pulled out the rest of the weapons inspectors today.

“We will not accept this illegal separation of nationalities,” said Richard Butler, the blunt-spoken Australian who heads the disarmament effort. “Therefore, I will withdraw all . . . staff . . . and leave a skeleton staff at the Baghdad center to sustain our facility pending resolution of the present crisis.”

The six American inspectors left Baghdad in a convoy of three vehicles and crossed the Jordanian border on their way to Amman early this morning.

The withdrawal of all U.N. inspectors effectively ends, at least temporarily, the international monitoring system set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to block Iraqi production of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Butler acknowledged as much to reporters Thursday but said the Iraqis left him no choice after they carried out their threat, first issued Oct. 29, to deport all Americans working for the program.

“Our goal is to keep open the possibility to restart our work as soon as possible when the conditions are acceptable,” Butler said. But he added that “every day that has passed since the 29th of October . . . has harmed our monitoring effort, and certainly the absence of inspections has been a matter of most serious concern. Every day lost makes the circumstances worse.”

He added that flights over Iraq by an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft on loan to the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, the disarmament panel, will continue despite Iraqi threats to shoot it down.

Butler acted after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, who has been in New York since Monday, informed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the decision by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to immediately expel the Americans. Aziz repeated charges that the U.S. members were manipulating the commission’s findings and using it as a cover for espionage, allegations that Butler has described as “nonsense.”

The withdrawals came one day after the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned Baghdad’s threats against the inspectors, slapped a ban on international travel by top-level Iraqi officials and threatened “further measures” unless Iraq reverses course.

Late Thursday, the 15 council members issued a statement condemning Iraq “in the strongest terms” for its “unacceptable decision” in expelling the Americans and demanded it rescind its decision immediately. The statement did not warn Iraq of “serious consequences” if it refuses to cooperate but referred to a statement last month that used the phrase.

The atmosphere of crisis gripping Washington and the United Nations tightened a notch as a result of Thursday’s events, but there were no signs of an American military strike against Baghdad.

President Clinton assailed Iraq’s action as “clearly unacceptable and a challenge to the international community.”

“I intend to pursue this matter in a very determined way,” Clinton said after a 90-minute morning meeting with his national security team. “It is important to the safety of the world [that the weapons inspectors] continue their work.”

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Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary, called Iraq’s action “utterly outrageous” and declared that Hussein had “basically thrown away the key that gets him out of that sanctions box.” But he declined to answer questions about whether the United States had the authority to act alone, under existing U.N. resolutions, rather than go the more difficult route of forging a collective, international response.

The White House has sought to establish an atmosphere of calm rather than crisis. As of late Thursday, Clinton still planned to go on a four-day trip to California, Nevada, Kansas and Missouri for fund-raisers and other events starting today. Clinton even ventured out on a chilly afternoon for a round of golf.

Nonetheless, Iraq’s move seemed to hover over the day, starting with a bill-signing ceremony that Clinton delayed for more than an hour while he huddled with advisors, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger.

Meanwhile, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, head of the unified military command with responsibility for the Middle East, met with officials of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait to discuss the Iraqi situation. He wasn’t asking them for anything--such as permission to use their territory to stage military operations--but rather sought an “information exchange,” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.

Britain ordered the aircraft carrier Invincible to steam toward the Mediterranean from the Caribbean, in what was described as a previously planned deployment. The Pentagon reported the addition of four F-16 jet fighters and five tanker aircraft to Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. But Bacon said the planes were added to help police the U.N.-imposed “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq.

The United States has more than 20,000 troops, 200 warplanes and 17 ships in the region.

In New York, Aziz shrugged off the prospect of a military strike. “We are not scared of the threats being made by the Americans,” the Iraqi deputy prime minister told reporters.

For the U.N., resisting the Iraqi ultimatum is both a matter of principle and practicality.

Under the U.N. Charter and the Gulf War cease-fire agreement, Iraq is not permitted to designate who may be on the disarmament panel, and U.N. officials fear that yielding to Baghdad’s demands would set a precedent. Other nations might seek similar conditions on U.N. activities.

In addition, Butler has said, there are a limited number of people who have the ability and desire to carry out the commission’s highly specialized work in the hostile and spartan living conditions of Baghdad.

The decision to expel the Americans immediately was announced Thursday in Baghdad by the Revolutionary Command Council, the ruling body that surrounds Hussein. In keeping with earlier announcements, the Iraqis said they would cooperate with U.N. inspectors who were not Americans but insisted that U.S. nationals must leave.

Iraqi officials turned down Butler’s request that the departure of the U.S. contingent be delayed until this morning, when the Americans could fly to Bahrain with the rest of the exiting inspectors. U.N. aircraft do not fly in or out of Iraq after nightfall.

Officials at the United Nations suggested that there might be an element of payback in the Iraqi refusal to let the Americans leave by plane. They said Aziz last week asked for a waiver of restrictions on Iraqi flights so that he could fly directly to New York from Baghdad, but the U.S. objected--forcing him to drive to Amman, the Jordanian capital, to get on a plane.

A statement by the Revolutionary Command Council said no Americans would be permitted to participate in the inspections “until the U.S. administration and the Security Council reconsider their irresponsible policy in dealing with Iraq and its rights.”

Aziz has said Iraq wants a timetable for ending an oil embargo and other economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait in 1990, eventually triggering the Persian Gulf War. But under the cease-fire ending the war, the sanctions cannot be lifted until the disarmament commission certifies that Iraq has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq argues that U.S. inspectors alone are preventing that certification.

“We are not against the Americans for their nationality . . . but we have requested the Security Council to recompose the special commission so that it becomes a real, genuine international organ, not an American organ,” Aziz told reporters.

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Butler, who has noted that Americans account for only 14% of the commission staff, repeated in reply that staff members are chosen for their expertise, not their nationality.

Butler’s aides said 76 commission workers were to be on the flight that left Iraq this morning. The six Americans who left by vehicles were accompanied by two colleagues. That will leave seven employees in the Baghdad monitoring station and 12 others to maintain the Chilean helicopters the inspectors use for transportation and surveillance in the countryside, officials said.

Although the U.N. maintains remotely operated video cameras and other sensing devices at weapons sites, factories and laboratories around Iraq, Butler acknowledged that the departure of the inspectors deals a severe blow to the monitoring effort. Some of the cameras already have been sabotaged since the Iraqis started blocking inspections two weeks ago, Butler said.

Officials suspect that Iraq may have precipitated the showdown because inspectors were closing in on secret biological weapons research. Recent reports by the commission have noted considerable progress in neutralizing Iraq’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs and its long-range missile capabilities, but major gaps remain in knowledge about its germ warfare programs.

Butler said U-2 flights will resume in the next few days, but he declined to specify a date. Although Iraq repeatedly has threatened to fire on the plane, the plane was not attacked when it last flew Monday. Defense experts said the unarmed U-2 probably can avoid Iraqi antiaircraft missiles, but any attack on the aircraft would probably prompt a retaliatory strike by the U.S.

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Turner reported from the United Nations and Peterson from Washington. Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.