Chief Arms Inspector Joins Albright in Defending Iraq Accord

Breaking his silence on the deal, U.N. chief weapons inspector Richard Butler on Thursday welcomed the new inspections accord reached with Iraq and described clarifications worked out with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the past three days as “entirely satisfactory.”

But behind the scenes, U.S. and U.N. officials said they still have grave reservations about how the deal will be implemented.

“The arrangements are entirely satisfactory to the organization I lead,” said Butler, the Australian diplomat who heads the U.N. commission established to ferret out and destroy Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs.

Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, Butler added: “It gives us new resources. It gives us access to sites that Iraq said were absolutely off limits.”

Despite the lingering doubts others have, Butler and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined Annan in defending the deal that the secretary-general reached with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last weekend.

The defense of the pact came amid a crescendo of criticism from Capitol Hill.

“In the last 48 hours, some have jumped to conclusions about the agreement, and I must say . . . that it will be very clear that those conclusions have turned out to be wrong,” Albright told reporters at the State Department. “If Ambassador Butler . . . is able to carry out his duties, then I think that we should understand that we are really better off than we were.”

Albright added a significant caveat to her endorsement: The agreement must be tested soon to determine whether Hussein will keep the pledges he made to Annan.

“If this does not work, then the whole world will have seen Saddam Hussein renege on an agreement that he made,” she said. “And we will have support for using other methods, and military force, to make sure that his weapons-of-mass-destruction threat is diminished and that he can’t threaten his neighbors.”

Albright insisted that Persian Gulf War allies such as Saudi Arabia would have provided needed assistance if the United States had gone through with a bombing campaign against Iraq.

“The Arab countries were much more supportive than was evident,” she said. “The Arab leaders themselves are in the neighborhood with the bully, and therefore they are less likely to be vocal publicly.”

Critics--mostly Republican lawmakers--challenged both of Albright’s assertions, arguing that the U.N. weapons inspection system was weakened by the Annan-Hussein agreement and insisting that the Clinton administration has allowed the 1991 Gulf War coalition to disintegrate, leaving Washington with few significant allies.

“We’ve just concluded the second Gulf War, and we lost without firing a shot,” Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) told Albright during a Senate subcommittee hearing. “We’ve undermined the sovereignty of this country by allowing the U.N. to broker the deal, and now we’re . . . not getting too much support from our allies.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) said Annan “gave away the store” in the deal with Hussein. In an interview with Associated Press, Helms called on the United States to impose a naval blockade on Iraq, cutting off all commerce, including food. As a result, he said, “someone might do [Hussein] in.”

Annan launched his own effort to defend his handiwork. In a letter, he urged U.N. staff members not to be disheartened by criticism.

Butler apparently overcame his own doubts about the deal during a long meeting with Annan on Wednesday, sources familiar with the thinking of the chief weapons inspector said.

At the session, held at Annan’s residence, Butler reinforced a message pressed earlier by the United States that the existing weapons inspection commission must have the chief authority and that diplomats who now will escort weapons inspectors should not be allowed to meddle in the inspections themselves.

Annan gave Butler guarantees that the commission’s chief will remain in control of the inspection process. Butler was also assured that the diplomats will escort, not inspect.

U.S. and U.N. officials had expressed concern about the emergence of a parallel process that would undermine, overlap with or in other ways challenge the technical disarmament effort.

Behind the scenes, insiders said, Butler has also been deeply worried about loopholes in the agreement that could be exploited by Iraq and the possibility that the inspection process could be politicized with the addition of the diplomats.

Current and former weapons inspectors have been highly critical of the document all week.

“This will emasculate the most serious effort the world has ever tried to rid a bad regime of truly evil arms,” a former senior arms inspector said.

Some still-active inspectors have even considered quitting, according to sources.

Senior U.S. and U.N. officials said a number of potential problems remain:

* The presence of diplomats will inevitably offer opportunities for political spin. “Inspectors are supposed to be scientific and technical experts with a defined mission and insulated from political concerns,” said Jonathan Tucker, a former weapons inspector. “Commissioners will inevitably introduce a political agenda.”

* Iraq will now have a new mechanism to appeal the actions of weapons inspectors.

* The agreement calls for the inspectors to “respect the legitimate concerns of Iraq relating to national security, sovereignty and dignity.” Judith Yaphe of the National Defense University in Washington said that language allows political control of inspectors.

“What if the inspectors try a bang-on-the-door surprise inspection, and the handlers stop them and say, ‘Come back and knock nicely and say, “Please can we inspect this Iraqi palace today?” ’

“And what if the Iraqis still say ‘It’s not a good time, come back later,’ and the handlers say ‘OK, thanks very much.’ That’s a nightmare because it provides time to cleanse a site. And later, after the inspection, the place is declared sanitized and free,” she said.