U.N. Chief Confident About Pact With Iraq

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan briefed the Security Council on Tuesday about his deal with Iraq and announced a “sense of approval” for it from the 15 council members, though Clinton administration officials separately expressed serious reservations about the accord.

“We believe that this agreement is a step in the right direction, but we need some clarifications in some of the language,” Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters after the two-hour meeting with Annan. “Our concern is whether [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein will find loopholes.”

This indicated that tough back-room work lies ahead at the U.N. in coming days to translate the brief, seven-point accord that Annan negotiated into an amended disarmament program--which the United States wants put to a quick test.

“We want to verify it soon,” Richardson said.

Annan, at a news conference, said details must be ironed out. But he predicted that, in the end, the accord will have “unanimous support. . . . What is important is that this agreement can and should work.”

He also expressed confidence that the deal, unlike past accords with Baghdad, will hold up because it was negotiated directly between him and Hussein. The Iraqi leadership “has got the message, and he wants cooperation, he wants it done,” Annan said.

After all issues are clarified, the United States, Britain and Sweden want them put in writing in a new resolution. The council would be asked to approve the resolution, which would include an enforcement mechanism--with the threat of military strikes--in the event of new Iraqi violations, U.S. and British officials said.

But such steps could lead to council divisions, as was apparent Tuesday when French, Russian and Chinese diplomats questioned the need for a new resolution.

In his remarks, Annan called the Iraqi leaders “very disciplined and hard-working people” and predicted that the U.N. will witness a “qualitative difference in their attitude.”

Annan’s remarks, which had begun to worry American officials while he was still in Baghdad, are now triggering concern that his intervention may end up softening or politicizing a rigorous international program intended to find and dismantle Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

In contrast to tough U.S. characterizations of the Iraqi leader and his behavior, Annan described Hussein as “calm,” “well-informed” and “a man I can do business with.”

The secretary-general called for U.N. weapons inspectors to show “a certain respect and dignity” toward Iraq and to “not push their weight around and cause tensions.”

The United States and sources close to the U.N. inspectors privately suggested that Annan’s accord is vague.

It outlines principles, but it includes no specifics to carry them out. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler found several potentially serious loopholes in the agreement, sources said.

At the closed council session Tuesday, Richardson and other members pressed Annan on a dozen major areas. The discussions were described as polite but intense.

One of the biggest worries was about the chain of command and authority of the U.N. Special Commission; it may be altered with the addition of new inspection personnel and procedures.

“We wanted to make sure that this is not an agreement that supersedes the previous resolutions,” said a senior European envoy who attended the talks.

The commission must remain the “key instrument of authority” in all the hunts for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Richardson said.

Concern is growing in part because Annan told the council Tuesday that he plans to appoint his own special representative in Baghdad. A widely rumored candidate is Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister whom U.S. officials view as soft on Iraq.

Another new leader in the disarmament effort will be a commissioner to lead a new group of diplomats appointed by the secretary-general to accompany inspectors to Iraqi “presidential sites.”

Richardson pressed Annan--who did not offer any names--on unconfirmed reports that the commissioner will be a Russian. Washington has been suspicious of Russia’s position in the Iraq-related crises. Moscow has argued for easing economic punishments against Baghdad and has signed deals worth billions of dollars that would take effect if sanctions were lifted.

U.S. and European allies also want to ensure that Annan’s accord does not offer any prospect that sanctions will be lifted soon, as Iraq may expect. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz predicted Tuesday that the gains for Baghdad will include easing of the embargo.

“I believe that we have achieved excellent political gains for the present and the future and practical gains related to the lifting of sanctions,” Aziz said on Iraqi television.

The seventh and last point of the new accord says that “the lifting of sanctions is obviously of paramount importance to the people and government of Iraq, and the secretary-general undertook to bring this matter to the full attention of the members of the Security Council.”

The sanctions issue is central to the broader dispute between Iraq and the United States.

Baghdad wants the sanctions lifted, asserting that it has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction and complied with U.N. resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War; Washington has insisted that Iraq has evaded or flouted the disarmament regime and last year declared that it cannot conceive of sanctions ending while Hussein is in power.

In Washington, Annan’s accord got mixed reviews on Capitol Hill when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen were met by questions, praise and criticism during an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D.-Del.) said the Annan accord put the United States in a stronger position. He called it a “vindication of a policy that diplomacy not backed by force is of little value, and diplomacy backed by force, where it’s clear it will be used, at least has the potential to bring about the results we wished.”

Republicans accused the administration of subcontracting American foreign policy to the U.N.

“So at the eleventh hour, as U.S. planes were starting their engines, Saddam invited Kofi Annan to Baghdad to cut a deal,” committee Chairman Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) declared. “Now Mr. Annan is back, promising, if you’ll forgive the quote, ‘peace in our time.’ We’re in the disgraceful position of either going along with whatever deal Mr. Annan brought home or being regarded as the bad guys who rejected peace and insisted on war.”

Sen. John Ashcroft (R.-Mo.) said Hussein is “better off today than he was in October. . . . He’s been free of effective inspection for several months without any penalty. He’s won greater prestige in the region and in the Arab world generally. He’ll be allowed to sell more oil. In making a new and untested agreement with the United Nations, Saddam has agreed to do nothing more than he was obliged to do all along.”

Times staff writers Tyler Marshall and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Under the Deal, Iraq Must . . .

* Provide “immediate, unrestricted, unconditional” access for U.N. inspectors to all sites as called for by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

* If done, this commitment will allow inspectors to fulfill their mission to:

* Find and destroy all chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

* Find and destroy missiles to deliver those weapons.

* Institute a system for long-term monitoring to make sure more are not built.

* Commitment applies to all sites anywhere in Iraq, including eight previously denied “presidential sites.”

* Senior diplomats appointed by Secretary-General will accompany inspectors, with repeat visits and no deadlines for completion.

* All areas, facilities, equipment, records and means of transportation shall be open to inspectors.