Bolstering the Iraq Deal

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says the Clinton administration’s concerns over the new U.N. agreement with Iraq have been largely satisfied by clarifications from Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She now faces the daunting task of trying to persuade an increasingly critical Republican leadership in Congress that it should withhold judgment on the deal Annan negotiated in Baghdad until it has been tested.

So far, the secretary hasn’t been doing too well. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has condemned the agreement as appeasement and accused the administration of turning the conduct of U.S. foreign policy over to the United Nations. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has opined that Annan “gave away the store.” Helms, who apparently thinks Iraq’s trade takes place along a nonexistent seacoast, has called for a naval blockade to cut off all commerce, including food imports. The senator suggests that hungry Iraqis might ease their suffering by killing Saddam Hussein. Hyperbole and ignorant bluster all this may be, but it comes from powerful people whose support the administration would like to have.

Albright concedes that the deal with Iraq falls well short of perfection. Among its troubling ambiguities is a pledge that U.N. weapons inspectors will “respect the legitimate concerns of Iraq relating to national security, sovereignty and dignity.” Baghdad could try to interpret that clause as giving it veto power over where the inspectors can go. If Annan’s clarifications have resolved U.S. doubts, Congress and the American people should be told why. Meanwhile, Albright is properly pressing for an early test of Iraqi intentions by having the inspectors seek full entry to sites from which they were earlier barred.

An effort to get a tough Security Council resolution to enforce the agreement is running into expectable objections from France, Russia and China. In the absence of a resolution warning that renewed Iraqi cheating would bring “the severest consequences”--meaning military action--the United States and Britain should issue their own statement of understanding about what Iraq has committed itself to do and, broadly, how they are ready to respond if Iraq reneges. If the assurances and clarifications given by Annan in fact support the claim that Baghdad has promised to allow full and unhindered access to all suspect sites, then there’s no reason for anyone to object to that position.