Albright Says Iraq Deal Satisfies Main U.S. Goals

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Wednesday that new clarifications show the United Nations’ deal with Iraq meets all of Washington’s primary objectives, and she rejected Republican criticism that the agreement amounts to “appeasement.”

The next step, Albright said, will be to attempt to enforce the pact as soon as possible to find out if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will abide by his written pledges, reached Sunday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Responding to U.S. demands for more details of the deal, Annan said Wednesday that the existing U.N. weapons team--and its tough chairman, Richard Butler--will retain “operational control” of the inspection program despite a new layer of U.N. bureaucracy, Albright told a congressional committee.

If Iraq reneges, she said, the deal does not diminish the U.S. capacity to use military force against Baghdad’s suspected chemical and biological weapons programs.

“This leaves us with a policy that is, quite frankly, not fully satisfactory to anyone,” Albright conceded. “It is a real-world policy, not a feel-good policy. But I’m convinced it is the best policy to protect our interests and those of our friends and allies in the [Persian] Gulf. It embodies both our desire for peace and our determination to fight if necessary.”

Albright’s comments about the U.N. clarifications came as Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, attacked the agreement and Annan.

Lott said the United States should reject the deal, although he stopped short of calling for immediate military action.

“We cannot afford peace at any price,” Lott said in a speech on the Senate floor. “It is always possible to get a deal if you give enough away. The secretary-general thinks he can trust the man who has invaded his neighbors, who has used chemical weapons 10 times, and who has tried to assassinate former President George Bush. This is folly. I cannot understand why the Clinton administration would place trust in someone devoted to building a human relationship with a mass murderer.”

Annan’s comments, he said, “reflect someone bent on appeasement, not someone determined to make the United Nations inspection regime work effectively.”

Asked at a Capitol Hill news conference about Lott’s comments, Albright said: “This is not a time to bash the United Nations. This is a time to understand that this agreement is a useful one that needs to have some clarifications. The proof of it is in the testing. In no way has the United States given away anything.”

When asked if she thought that Lott was injecting a partisan note into the debate, Albright, a longtime Democratic Party stalwart, responded with mock alarm: “I had all those [partisan] instincts surgically removed. I believe in a bipartisan foreign policy.”

Lott objected that the agreement left Annan in control of Iraq policy, saying: “This accord sets up a new inspection regime under the control of the secretary-general. He appoints ‘senior diplomats’ to the group. He names the head of the group. The new group will have its own rules--but we do not know what they are because they have not been developed.”

Senior administration officials expressed similar concerns earlier in the week. But Albright said Wednesday that many of the questions have been answered.

“Butler will remain very much in charge under the terms of the new agreement, and he will continue to be as independent as he has always been,” Albright said. “The diplomats that will be going along will be observers only, with [inspectors] retaining operational control.”

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Britain and the United States sought support in the Security Council on Wednesday for a new resolution threatening Iraq with “serious consequences” if it fails to abide by the new agreement.

U.S. and British officials said their objective was to obtain council authorization in advance for sustained bombing if Baghdad violates the pact. But French Ambassador Alain Dejammet said Paris would not go along with anything that could result in automatic military action, Reuters news agency reported.

The administration also made clear that it will block any attempt to ease the economic sanctions against Iraq even if Baghdad lives up to the new agreement.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the United States will insist that the sanctions remain in place until Iraq complies with “all relevant resolutions” passed by the Security Council after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. He said those include a demand that Baghdad account for 600 Kuwaitis who are still missing. Asked when the sanctions might be lifted, Rubin said: “That’s a long way off. That’s a truly hypothetical question.”

Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told reporters that the U.S. military buildup in the Gulf has cost the Pentagon “well over $600 million” already and that the expense is sure to rise even if no attack is ordered. He said that figure includes the cost of rushing ships, warplanes and troops to the Gulf in a buildup that began in November. “Basically, that is just actions to date,” Hamre added. “It is going to be more than that.”

Jayantha Dhanapala, the Sri Lankan diplomat in charge of U.N. disarmament programs, is expected to be selected to head the new organization created by the Annan-Hussein agreement. He was president of the U.N. conference that extended indefinitely the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The 59-year-old diplomat also served as ambassador to Washington from 1995 to 1997.