Light Appears at the End of a Long Tunnel for Iraq

For a year now, the big powers at the United Nations have been arguing about the best way to deal with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The U.S. and Britain essentially see him as a criminal on parole who ought to be punished when he breaks the terms of his probation, while Russia, France and China suggest he ought to be encouraged toward rehabilitation.

The U.S. view has largely prevailed, with the U.N. thumping Iraq with economic sanctions and the threat of military force when Baghdad has balked at demands that it get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.

But ever since Secretary-General Kofi Annan returned from Baghdad in February with a promise from Hussein to be more cooperative with U.N. weapons inspectors, officials here have adopted a more lenient posture toward Iraq. As a result, it appears that in the next few months, the Russian-French-Chinese argument will get its first real test.

The latest evidence of the new attitude surfaced last week, when the 15 members of the Security Council--including the United States--formally acknowledged Iraq’s progress in dismantling its outlawed nuclear weapons research program.

The unanimously approved statement held out the possibility that, as soon as July, the Security Council may officially confirm that Iraq has met the terms of the 1991 Persian Gulf War cease-fire requiring it to eliminate its atomic weapons capability.

That would be a first step toward lifting the oil embargo that has stifled the Iraqi economy. There are many more steps needed before the embargo could be removed--most notably proof that Iraq has disposed of its chemical and biological weapons and its long-range missiles. But an official U.N. death certificate for the nuclear weapons program would be one of those incentives that Russian, French and Chinese diplomats say should be offered Iraq.

France’s ambassador to the U.N., Alain Dejammet, described the Security Council’s action last week as an attempt to ease the “frustration” in the Iraqi capital and elsewhere in the Arab world over the continuing sanctions, which have been in effect for most of this decade.

Although the U.S. supported the measure, the Americans were widely seen here as having little choice, given the overwhelming sentiment on the Security Council for some sort of pat on the back for Baghdad. U.S. negotiators did manage to place a strong set of conditions on Iraq’s behavior.

The decision came after inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna-based affiliate of the U.N., reported no signs of ongoing nuclear weapons research in Iraq. Some independent arms experts have derided the agency’s findings, noting that its inspectors failed to detect Iraq’s prewar nuclear program in 1990.

There are other signs of a new U.N. attitude toward Baghdad.

Annan has repeatedly praised Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors since his talk with Hussein in February opened eight previously off-limits presidential compounds to inspection. After a recent meeting in Paris with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, Annan once again declared himself “satisfied that . . . Iraq has lived up to its obligations.”

These optimistic readings overlook the fact that Iraq had months to remove any documents or other evidence from the presidential compounds before the first inspectors arrived this spring. Annan also has ignored frequent suggestions by top Iraqi officials that they will at some point again refuse inspectors entry to the facilities.

The hazards of this soft-sell approach are evident to weapons inspectors.

“We fear there’s a slippery slope here and Iraq is going to try to further weaken the inspection system and eventually we’re not going to be able to detect clandestine weapons programs,” said David Albright, a former inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.