U.S. Rebuffs Hussein’s Threats to Bar Monitors

The latest confrontation with Iraq intensified Saturday as U.S. officials bluntly rejected new threats by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to bar all United Nations weapons inspections.

In a defiant address Saturday in Baghdad marking the seventh anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf War, Hussein said he will carry out a demand from Iraq’s parliament to end Iraqi cooperation with the arms inspections unless sanctions against his country are lifted.

His threat against the entire inspection program amounts to a reversion to Iraq’s position of last fall, when Hussein’s government called on the U.N. Security Council to set a deadline for ending inspections.

In October, Iraq’s National Assembly called for an end to its cooperation with U.N. inspectors, and the following month it set a May deadline for them to finish their work.

Hussein’s speech came two days before the U.N.’s chief weapons inspector, Richard Butler, is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad for a series of meetings with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz. At those sessions, Butler is expected to renew U.N. demands that Iraq stop preventing inspectors from entering selected sites that the U.N. suspects of housing illegal weapons research. Hussein seemed to be setting a tone of confrontation for the talks.

At a stopover in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain on Saturday, Butler said the inspectors cannot complete their work unless they have unfettered access to any Iraqi site they choose to examine.

Butler said he was prepared to listen to the Iraqi position “so their legitimate concerns of dignity and sovereignty can be attended to.”

But, he said, “We must have the access we require; otherwise there is going to be nothing but further sanctions. . . . We are in a very serious moment now.”

A White House official who requested anonymity said in response to Hussein’s threat: “Iraq has not yet met its obligations under the requirements of the U.N. Security Council resolution. It must heed the repeated unanimous calls on it to end its defiance and comply with the requirements.”

Under terms of the cease-fire that ended the Gulf War, U.N. inspectors must certify that Iraq has eliminated its long-range missiles and its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons before the Security Council can lift the oil embargo and other economic sanctions that have impoverished the country.

Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in an interview with CBS-TV that the Iraqi leader was “dreaming” if he believed that the sanctions would be lifted without Iraq’s complying with all U.N. Security Council resolutions, including “full and unfettered access to all sites of weapons of mass destruction.”

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Hussein warned in his televised address that he would honor a demand from the Iraqi parliament to stop the arms inspections unless the sanctions are removed.

The Iraqi people and their government are “determined to launch a great jihad,” or holy struggle, to achieve this, he said.

“If the Security Council does not adopt its decision to meet its obligations toward Iraq . . . Iraq is determined to adopt a stand parallel to a recommendation by representatives of the people in the National Assembly,” he said, standing in full military uniform in front of an Iraqi flag. “There is no other option left for Iraq but this position.”

Elsewhere, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, at a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand, repeated warnings that the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq as a last resort.

“Patience is a virtue that is not eternal,” he said. “And I think the patience is wearing thin on the part of our allies as well.”

Hussein reacted angrily, saying: “They [the United States] should not deceive themselves to think that what they have failed to achieve through wickedness and tricks they are able to realize by military aggression. They should be more careful, and they should reconsider what they are intending to do.”

Britain has sent an aircraft carrier to the Gulf to join the large U.S. military force already in the region. British Defense Secretary George Robertson said that if diplomatic efforts fail, “we may need to consider other measures, including the use of force.”

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Ironically, if Hussein carried out his threat to end U.N. inspections, he would remove one of the strongest arguments America’s allies have made against the use of force. Russia and France have opposed any military strike on Iraq partly on the grounds that an attack would provoke Hussein into throwing out the inspectors and thus removing any chance that his ability to rebuild his illegal weapons arsenal could be controlled.

President Clinton has said the United States will await the results of Butler’s talks in Baghdad. Butler is scheduled to report back to the Security Council in New York on Friday.

Russia, France and China have tried to placate Iraq’s insistence that the U.N. disarmament commission is dominated by Americans and Britons and have volunteered their own arms experts to the effort.

Moscow also has offered to replace with its own planes a U.S. U-2 surveillance aircraft that the U.N. is using to fly over Iraq. However, Charles Duelfer, deputy chairman of the disarmament group, has said the Russian aircraft could not substitute for the U-2 because they do not have the same capabilities. He said the Russian craft may be used to augment the U-2.

Times staff writer Craig Turner in New York contributed to this report.