Arms Inspector’s Quitting Tests U.S. Iraq Policy

The noisy resignation of a senior U.N. arms inspector put the Clinton administration on the defensive Thursday, as it sought to explain an Iraq policy that critics assail as a new soft line toward a dangerous regime.

Faced with deepening divisions on the U.N. Security Council, the administration in recent months has tried to reduce conflicts over the inspectors’ intrusive forays into suspected Iraqi weapons sites. The goal has been to deprive Saddam Hussein of a key propaganda point while shifting the world’s attention to the Iraqi president’s increased flouting of U.N. resolutions that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Hussein has permitted no inspections of possible sites since early August; he had agreed to the access last February as he faced the threat of a U.S. military strike.

But even as administration officials claimed to be seeing signs that their new approach might be working, frustration was growing among U.N. inspectors who complained they were being held back by the United States--and the Security Council--from ferreting out Hussein’s secret arsenal.

The angry resignation letter submitted Wednesday by inspector Scott Ritter left administration officials scrambling to explain their nuanced approach and worrying that public opinion could turn decisively against them.

One U.S. policymaker lamented that the timing of Ritter’s resignation was “unfortunate, because for once we had our ducks in order.”

This official argued that Iraq’s decision to halt most cooperation with the inspectors, effectively paralyzing the effort to eliminate Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, was an embarrassment to Russia, France, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others who had argued to the U.S. and Britain that diplomatic approaches to Iraq would work better than saber-rattling.

Ritter, an aggressive retired Marine Corps officer who had been a target of Iraqi complaints, charged that the decision by the U.S. to pull its punches on its hard-line inspection policy threatened to undo the progress that had been made in unearthing Hussein’s secrets.

In his resignation letter, he wrote: “Almost without exception, every one of the impressive gains made . . . over the years in disarming Iraq can be traced to the effectiveness of the inspection regime. The issue of immediate, unrestricted access is, in my opinion, the cornerstone of any viable inspection regime, and as such is an issue worth fighting for.”

Thursday, Ritter said he worries that the inspection program--the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM--could be forced to accept a “compromise” that would give Hussein enough leeway to hide his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons indefinitely.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, clearly chagrined at Ritter’s letter and at news reports that U.S. officials have sought on several occasions to restrain inspectors, insisted that the United States continues to be the key supporter of the inspection teams. The administration has changed tactics, but not its underlying policy, she said.

“We have been the ones covering [UNSCOM’s] back, to a great extent, in the Security Council,” she said.

Other U.S. officials mounted a vigorous campaign of rebuttal.

They acknowledged that they had sometimes urged U.N. inspection teams to change tactics and the timing of planned visits. On some occasions, “it was better not to make UNSCOM the target” of criticism, one administration official said.

Amid Iraqi complaints about the composition of inspection teams, U.S. officials had sometimes given advice about who should serve on the teams, they said.

But they insisted that on other occasions, they had pushed the teams to undertake inspections that might not otherwise have been made. In recent months, those recommendations had led to revelations about Hussein’s stocks of deadly VX nerve gas, and to the discovery of an array of valuable documents about the size and nature of his arsenal, officials said.

Some U.S. officials, while conceding that the new strategy may not work, argue that Washington has had little choice but to try a new direction.

The administration concluded earlier this year that there was eroding support in the Arab world, among most U.S. allies and domestically for punishing Iraq with airstrikes for refusing to comply with inspections.

One European diplomat agreed. “There is no stomach for bombing,” the diplomat said. “But this new approach clearly is a gamble.”

David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the U.S. approach boils down to an attempt at “saving the inspection process by not inspecting.”

Richter reported from Washington and Turner from New York. Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.