U.N. Orders Arms Inspectors Back to Iraq as Crisis Eases

The U.N. on Thursday ordered its weapons inspectors back into Iraq after the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein turned away from a confrontation that had threatened to draw the United States into renewed warfare in the Persian Gulf.

U.S. military forces converging on the Gulf did not immediately stand down, however, reflecting the attitude at the U.N. and in Washington that the crisis will not end until the inspectors have returned to Baghdad and resumed their work hunting down and dismantling Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat who leads the disarmament effort, said 77 staff members would fly into Baghdad from nearby Bahrain by noon today and be back on the job Saturday. He said they will have catching up to do after three weeks of being blocked from inspections and may have to penetrate new Iraqi attempts to cover up work on prohibited weapons.

President Clinton cautiously welcomed the reversal even while ordering more American firepower within striking distance of Iraq.

“In the coming days we will wait and see whether [Hussein] does in fact comply with the will of the international community,” Clinton said in Washington. He added that Iraq “must comply unconditionally” with the U.N. program.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took a similarly measured approach. “So far, what we have are statements by Saddam Hussein to reverse course. We want to be sure that has really happened. Actions speak louder than words,” Albright said in Geneva.

National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger told reporters that the U.S. would continue to follow a “two-prong strategy” of diplomacy backed by the threat of military force.

On Thursday, 12 F-15 fighters, 18 F-16 fighters, two B-1 bombers and Patriot surface-to-air defense missiles were added to the American arsenal in the region. The latest deployments bring the total to 281 U.S. warplanes and 22 American ships, including two aircraft carriers.

Iraq’s rollback came after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz had discussions in Moscow with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov. Primakov then relayed the agreement at a 2 a.m. meeting in Geneva on Thursday with Albright, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, French Foreign Affairs Minister Hubert Vedrine and Sha Zukang, China’s ambassador to the U.N. disarmament conference.

Despite concerns at the U.N. that Iraq still may be seeking concessions in return for its reversal, all parties insisted that there had been no such deal.

Aziz, in Cairo for meetings with Egyptian and Arab League officials, said Iraq got nothing for ending the standoff other than a platform for its complaints and Russian promises to work to accelerate the lifting of sanctions against the country. Russia also said it will try to ensure that weapons inspectors respect Iraqi sovereignty, Aziz said.

“I did not make a deal in Moscow,” Aziz insisted to reporters. He said there were no “specific commitments” from the Russians, but that he believes they “will do their best . . . to correct the wrong situation and start a new approach toward Iraq” within the Security Council.

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A statement issued by Iraq and Russia as a result of the Yeltsin-Aziz meeting pledges that Russia will “take active measures to enhance the effectiveness of the work” of the weapons group, called the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq.

U.N. officials said Russia, perhaps joined by France and China, could step up pressure on the Security Council to ease the Iraqi oil embargo and other crippling economic sanctions and may press for changes in the disarmament process and for increasing the number of non-American inspectors.

The United States and Britain are wary of such initiatives, although they have indicated they may agree to increase the amount of oil Iraq is allowed to sell under a U.N.-administered humanitarian program and might not object to raising the number of non-American inspectors.

Bill Richardson, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., noted that side agreements between Iraq and Russia are not binding on the United States. “There is no quid pro quo, no concession, no carrots on the part of the United States,” he said. He added that the U.S. would use its Security Council veto if necessary to prevent what it considered a premature lifting of sanctions.

The 18-member panel that serves as the disarmament’s oversight body will meet in emergency session today and report to the Security Council. It could recommend changes in the inspection process.

“We’ll do what we’ve been asked to do, which is consider ways in which we can improve and make more efficient the work” of the U.N. supervision program over Iraq, Butler told reporters Thursday.

But he also said he hopes for greater Iraqi cooperation with his inspectors than he has had. According to their reports to the Security Council, weapons inspectors have been harassed, blocked, lied to and misled by Iraqi authorities in their more than six years on the job.

“I’m satisfied with the decisions of the [Iraqi] government,” Butler said. “We’ll go back now and go to work, and I earnestly hope our work . . . will be marked by cooperation and progress in disarmament. We’ll see. We have to go and test it practically.”

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Under the agreement that ended the Gulf War, the disarmament team must report that Iraq has eliminated its long-range missiles, nuclear warfare capability, and chemical and biological weapons before the Security Council can end the sanctions. Iraq long has complained that the weapons commission was dragging its feet.

The current confrontation began Oct. 29, when Iraq told the U.N. it would no longer accept American participation in the inspections and demanded an end to flights by an American U-2 surveillance plane on loan to the program. Iraq argued that U.S. members of the team were manipulating the inspections program to extend the sanctions and were using the U.N. as a cover for American espionage, charges denounced as “nonsense” by Butler.

The U.N. took the position that Iraq could not dictate composition of the inspection teams and rejected Baghdad’s ultimatum.

On Nov. 13, the Iraqis deported the six Americans working for the commission in Baghdad, and Butler responded by withdrawing most of the rest of the staff to Bahrain, an island emirate in the Gulf that serves as the commission’s supply depot.

The Clinton administration said it favored a diplomatic solution to the confrontation but also increased its forces in the Gulf and refused to rule out a military strike on Iraq. But there was little international support for an attack. Russia, France, China and the Arab world vehemently opposed use of force. Only Britain, among America’s major Gulf War partners, followed the U.S. line on the military option.

Exactly what prompted Iraq to back down after three weeks was a source of puzzlement Thursday. Officially, Albright said the U.S. strategy of “intensive diplomacy with a robust military presence,” combined with the solidarity in the Security Council, made the difference.

But privately, U.S. officials concede they may not have the whole story. “Nobody really knows. You can speculate endlessly,” one senior administration official said.

He said the “best guess” is it was Baghdad’s nervousness with the growing U.S. military deployment combined with the promise that Russia would more actively plead Iraq’s case at the Security Council.

“This week they saw two things happening: The U.S. was moving a big military force--stuff they’re very familiar with--and two aircraft carriers close by. That had a sobering effect,” the official said. “Their original calculation was that any American military action would be a pinprick. But they could tell from the stuff that we were moving that this was not the case.”

The United States does not, however, have a full accounting of the Russian discussions with Iraq. “Primakov kept a lot of it close to his chest,” the senior administration official said.

Meantime, in Baghdad, Hussein proclaimed a “day of the people” and sought to portray his decision to end the brewing conflict with U.N. arms inspectors as a victory for Iraq. Hundreds of Iraqis poured into the streets for anti-U.S. demonstrations, the Associated Press reported. Children and adults scrawled “Down with America!” on the floors of schools, homes, factories and on streets and public squares.

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Turner reported from the United Nations and Wright from Geneva. Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and John Daniszewski in Cairo also contributed to this report.

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A COUP FOR THE KREMLIN

Russia’s successful intervention in the Iraq crisis shows it takes more than one superpower to keep the world at peace. A14