U.N., Iraq Reach an 11th-Hour Deal; U.S. Takes Cautious Line

In a dramatic, three-hour bargaining session Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein agreed on a plan to allow U.N. weapons inspections at eight disputed sites, in a breakthrough that could head off a planned U.S.-led air assault on Iraq.

“We have a deal,” Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters late Sunday after final details had been worked out. “It’s positive for Iraq, and we feel it’s positive for the region and, in fact, for the world.”

The secretary-general “expects the text to be acceptable to all 15 members of the Security Council,” Eckhard said. Iraq was scheduled to sign the agreement today. Annan is then to return to New York and brief the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Eckhard said Annan telephoned Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after his meeting with Hussein and was confident of American support for the pact, which specifies how many foreign observers will be allowed to visit the presidential sites and puts no limit on the U.N. mission.

Eckhard said that in addition to Albright, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and top Chinese officials--representing the council’s four other permanent members--had conferred with Annan and are expected to support the agreement.

The Clinton administration, however, reacted cautiously. Albright warned against a “phony solution” that might still force U.S. action. “It is possible that [Annan] will come with something we don’t like, in which case we will pursue our national interest,” she said on ABC-TV’s “This Week With Sam and Cokie.” “If we don’t like it, we’ll make it very clear.”

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, meanwhile, announced plans for a new call-up of several hundred reservists to prepare for a military strike in the event that diplomacy fails to work out any final details. In the Persian Gulf, preparations aboard U.S. carriers for a strike continued apace.

Any deal must also be tested--repeatedly--to ensure that Baghdad does indeed fully comply, senior administration officials warned Sunday. And even before details were revealed about the agreement in Baghdad, U.S. officials were already predicting future showdowns with Iraq that might necessitate troop deployment or the use of force.

Yet U.S. officials privately expressed optimism that Iraq had agreed to terms negotiated by Annan. Despite the three-week military buildup, the White House had long predicted that Iraq would eventually agree to back down--in large part because of the growing number of U.S. warplanes and troops in the Gulf.

The other major factor in the reversal, U.S. officials said, was the intervention of Annan, a soft-spoken career diplomat from Ghana who won the top post at the U.N. in December 1996 with backing from the United States. His trip to Baghdad and high-profile mediation offered Hussein a face-saving way to win acknowledgment of Baghdad’s concerns as well as avert a major series of punitive airstrikes.

Hussein’s Last-Minute Retreat From Stand

At the center of the crisis was Iraq’s decision to permanently bar U.N. weapons inspectors from eight presidential compounds, including three in Baghdad and five others scattered around the country. The arms inspection team was created following Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, to uncover and dismantle Baghdad’s chemical, biological and nuclear warfare programs and its long-range missiles.

The key element in the Sunday talks with Annan was Hussein’s last-minute decision to retreat from his earlier insistence that U.N. arms inspections at presidential compounds throughout Iraq be limited to a single, 60-day period and that repeat inspections be restricted. Washington had rejected time constraints as well as other conditions.

Indeed, the biggest U.S. fear was that Iraq would agree--but with conditions. Those might have included a longer time limit, such as 90 or 120 days, for wrapping up inspections at all presidential sites, or a one-time-only limit on visiting each site.

This so-called 90% solution would have forced Washington to make tough decisions, in part because key allies might have been willing to accept the terms. Once agreement on presidential sites was worked out, the time issue was the biggest potential deal-breaker, U.S. officials said.

Agreement Addresses Main U.N. Concerns

The agreement mediated by Annan accommodates two main U.N. concerns, the secretary-general’s spokesman said. It conforms to all original U.N. resolutions. And it preserves the integrity of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) mandate to find and disarm Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles.

The final details Annan worked on Sunday night in talks with Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz covered two key points: how many inspectors and diplomats will enter each presidential site and how much notice the Iraqi government will be given in advance of an inspection, according to European envoys.

The eleventh-hour compromise is based on a formula known as UNSCOM-plus. Under it, the original UNSCOM inspectors drawn from 21 nations would be allowed access to all suspected weapons sites without restrictions. But at presidential compounds, they would be “escorted” by diplomats, who represent the “plus” in UNSCOM-plus.

Iraq has long sought to change the makeup of UNSCOM. And Hussein has complained about the disproportionate U.S. influence on UNSCOM, produced in part because it has one of the world’s two largest groups of specialists on weapons of mass destruction.

The agreement calls for diplomatic escorts from the U.S., Britain, China, France and Russia to accompany weapons inspectors in presidential living areas.

Iraq had pressed for a small number of inspectors and significant notice, such as the night before an inspection. U.S. officials feared that Baghdad might attempt to move documents or materiel if given enough time, as the Iraqis have done at other sites.

As of late Sunday, the White House still did not have details of the text. Albright will wait until Annan has more secure telephone lines after leaving Iraq to get a full briefing, U.S. officials said.

“You don’t buy a car without checking under the hood, and we haven’t even seen the outlines of the car yet,” a senior administration official said Sunday. “We are hopeful. But this is far from a done deal.”

Hussein’s lengthy holdout on the time limit issue lent a theatrical quality to the negotiations. Discussions began Friday night between Annan and Aziz and initially looked bleak as they continued into early Sunday with the Iraqis refusing to shift their position. Annan at one point called Primakov and asked him to convince the Iraqis that their position was a deal-breaker.

As the negotiations dragged on--”very civilized, but also very difficult,” in the words of one participant--Iraq even refused to name the time and place for Annan’s meeting with the notoriously secretive Hussein. U.N. officials knew that a final agreement with Hussein was essential.

Finally, about noon Sunday, Annan was driven to an unknown destination in a convoy of three black Mercedes limousines dispatched by the Iraqi government. That destination turned out to be the Republican Presidential Palace, a sprawling compound in central Baghdad just a few blocks from where Annan was staying and one of the complexes at the heart of the dispute. At that point, the only major obstacle to an agreement that could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of Iraqis and many American and British service personnel was the impasse over inspection time limits.

Annan was accompanied to the meeting with Hussein by three advisors and his security chief, but he spent two-thirds of the time alone with the Iraqi leader and an interpreter.

According to a source familiar with Annan’s strategy, he was prepared to contend that Hussein could show himself a generous, compassionate man--and raise his prestige in the Arab world--by accepting the deal. Rejection, so the argument went, would be seen as intransigence and would broaden international support for an American attack.

Baghdad Leaks News of Deal

The meeting was all business, sources suggested, and, when it was over, only a few refinements were needed in the written text.

Baghdad was quick to herald the agreement--first by leaking it locally despite an agreement to hold the announcement until today. The Iraqis also quickly communicated with the governments of Egypt, Syria and Iran. The message, intercepted by U.S. intelligence, was that “full agreement” had been reached and the crisis was “over.”

Although the United States and its allies can claim success if a combination of tough diplomacy and the threat of military action allows U.N. weapons inspections to go on, Hussein’s inner circle has also profited diplomatically, especially in the Arab world, during his latest standoff with Washington.

“They are desert foxes,” a European envoy in Baghdad concluded.

For the first time since the Gulf War, the Iraqi foreign minister has been hosted in Egypt and Syria. A number of high-level envoys have made their way to Baghdad, altering Iraq’s status as an international pariah.

In addition, Arab public opinion has increasingly swung behind Iraq and against the United States. There is a new urgency to calls for a final lifting of the U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, which are widely seen to punish ordinary people rather than the regime.

By declaring in January that presidential sites would be “off limits” to inspectors, Hussein and his associates managed to widen fissures that had developed in the coalition that defeated him in the Gulf War. The U.S. and Britain were virtually alone in advocating use of force to ensure compliance.

To prepare for the possibility of military action, the United States in November began beefing up its presence in the Persian Gulf.

As of this week, the buildup includes more than 30,000 military personnel, 10,000 of them ground troops, two aircraft carriers and an armada of accompanying battleships armed with cruise missiles, as well as more than 100 land- and sea-based advanced fighter jets.

While the new agreement may get Baghdad off the hook, Annan’s mediation also offers the United States a face-saving way out of a crisis that has begun to backfire at home. Over the past week, the Clinton administration has been stunned by public reaction at public forums--both by Americans opposed to any use of force and by others who argue that the United States should go all the way and change the regime in Baghdad.

Clinton faced more opposition Sunday when he attended church, where antiwar demonstrators protested outside and the minister’s sermon alluded to the potential use of force.

Annan began to work virtually full time on the Iraq crisis two weeks ago. Along with two top aides, former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi and U.N. legal advisor Hans Corell, he started drafting a prospective agreement while still in New York. It was based partly on earlier proposals by France and Russia, and, in a series of meetings at the U.N., Annan managed to pull together what an assistant called a near consensus behind the plan among the fractious members of the Security Council.

On arrival Friday in Baghdad, he plunged into almost round-the-clock meetings, mainly with Aziz, aimed at hammering out compromises on various points in the proposal.

One participant in the talks said they were tense at times, but “no voices were raised.” This observer attributed the civil tone largely to Annan’s personal style, which he described as “creating a spirit of bonhomie around him.”

The source said that, at one point in the discussions, Aziz turned to Annan and said, “I trust you.”

Smiles and Relief Among Iraqis

All day Sunday, Iraqis had been encouraged by state television and radio reports indicating that the talks were going well. Then, late Sunday night, news began spreading by word of mouth of the apparent agreement, prompting smiles and feelings of relief.

“Of course I am happy, because it means there will not be a war again,” said Ali Salman, a 31-year-old driver. “Also, if Mr. Annan with my government is OK now, maybe it means that the oil will go and our country can be normal.

“This is what we want. . . . No people need war.”

But hotel worker Ahmad Mohammad, 34, said it was premature for Iraqis to celebrate. “When the sanctions are lifted, then there will be a party. Not now.”

Turner and Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Wright from Washington.