New Conflict Grows Over Iraqi Weapons

Iraq and the United Nations appeared to be on a fast-developing collision course Wednesday as the Baghdad government announced that it had suspended cooperation with U.N. weapons inspections until several conditions are met.

The regime of President Saddam Hussein also demanded an immediate end to eight years of international economic sanctions imposed on his country.

The moves indicate that Iraq will seek to block U.N. teams from further searches for weapons of mass destruction. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler responded to the demands by ordering his teams to continue their work, including surprise inspections of government facilities.

However, Iraq stopped a team of U.N. weapons inspectors from carrying out searches for banned weapons in Baghdad today, an Iraqi government official said.

Butler, who arrived in New York from Baghdad on Wednesday in preparation for an emergency briefing of the U.N. Security Council today, said he was “mystified” by Iraq’s actions because significant progress had been made recently.

“We were getting there. If this was a five-lap race, we were into the fifth lap. Why stop the race when you’re getting toward the finish line? I don’t know,” he said.

Iraq’s demands include changes in the leadership and staff of the weapons monitoring group and moving the group’s headquarters from New York to Geneva or Vienna--away from what Baghdad charges is U.S. control.

Baghdad has long wanted to see U.S. influence on the inspections operations diluted with the addition of other nationalities more sympathetic to Iraq, notably the Russians and the French.

A sense of foreboding about the new standoff built quickly Wednesday as U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan postponed a trip to Europe to deal with the developments.

U.S. and U.N. officials called Iraq’s demands a blatant violation of an agreement that Annan negotiated in February to end Baghdad’s refusal at that time to grant weapons inspectors full access to various sites.

“The reputation of the secretary-general of the United Nations is at stake this time,” a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson was expected to return from vacation for Butler’s briefing.

President Clinton’s top national security team met Wednesday for the third time in three days to discuss the Iraqi situation and launch behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts with key allies.

Russia, a long-standing ally of Iraq, again is expected to be the major problem. At the U.N., Russian envoy Yuri V. Fedotov suggested that Butler, an Australian, is partly to blame for the breakdown in talks.

Russia, China and France--who along with the U.S. and Britain are the permanent members of the Security Council--have long favored an easing or elimination of the sanctions against Iraq. All have negotiated commercial deals with Baghdad that will take effect when sanctions, which were instituted when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, are lifted.

Washington is already rejecting any compromise in responding to the new challenge from Baghdad.

“The Security Council unanimously agreed to support Kofi Annan’s memo of understanding [with Iraq], and it states explicitly that Iraq has to cooperate with the U.N.,” the senior U.S. official said.

Hussein “can’t decide he’ll only cooperate if the operation is restructured and has a five-headed committee that meets in Geneva,” the official said.

Charles A. Duelfer, the highest-ranking American on the U.N. weapons inspection team, said: “As things now stand, we can operate only under conditions Iraq has set for us in Iraq. That’s in direct contradiction to U.N. resolutions and will not allow us to credibly monitor or inform the Security Council whether Iraq has restarted any of its programs.”

Earlier this week, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz demanded that Butler certify that his work was complete.

On Wednesday, Butler said U.N. tracking of Iraq’s chemical weapons and missile programs was “in pretty good shape. We did need some more evidence . . . and that’s why I couldn’t agree to Iraq’s claim that I just wave a magic wand over it and . . . say, ‘It’s all over.’ But we didn’t need that much more.”

In an indication that Hussein is trying to show national consensus behind his regime’s moves, Iraq’s rubber-stamp parliament voted unanimously Wednesday to cut off cooperation with the inspections.

Iraqi demonstrators chanting anti-American slogans took to the streets to protest inspections and the U.S. role in the process.

U.S. and U.N. officials have a number of theories to explain Hussein’s new demands, including fears that Iraq is hiding more biological weapons.

During the last two weeks, Iraq has refused to turn over a critical document that would list the disposition of all the weapons of mass destruction the country produced.