Another Tiresome Round

The crisis with Iraq isn’t over. It has only been put on hold, until the next time Saddam Hussein senses he can get away with blocking the work of the U.N. weapons inspectors while parading Iraq before the world as the blameless victim of an inhumane economic blockade. This time, as Hussein finally had to acknowledge over the weekend, he overplayed his hand. His arrogance and obduracy alienated even China, France and Russia, Iraq’s sympathizers on the U.N. Security Council, and provoked a number of Arab states into unusual public criticism of his behavior. Next time--and only the willfully self-deluding can fail to believe there will be a next time--Hussein can be expected to calculate more shrewdly.

President Clinton credits diplomatic firmness and a readiness to use force for getting Iraq to back down. But Hussein’s tactical retreat can’t mask the fact that he has emerged from this confrontation with some measure of success.

At minimal cost to itself, Iraq again forced the United States into a military buildup that eventually will cost billions of dollars and require keeping on station for an indefinite time large numbers of ships, planes and personnel. In return, Hussein has been required only to promise once again that he will comply fully with all relevant U.N. resolutions and allow U.N. weapons inspectors complete access to all sites where they believe clandestine work on prohibited nuclear, chemical and germ weapons may be going on.

This is, of course, precisely what Hussein promised U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last February, what in fact Iraq first promised in 1991. Its failure to keep its word is the sole reason why the economic sanctions imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990 remain in effect. The misery suffered by Iraqis since then is due wholly to their regime’s refusal to abandon its quest for weapons of mass destruction.

The U.N. inspectors are expected to be back at work this week, but meanwhile Iraq has won time to better hide its clandestine weapons materials. The inspectors were apparently close to some important discoveries on Aug. 5 when Baghdad abruptly said it was halting all cooperation with them. Given the right materials, which Iraq still has, it takes only months to produce chemical and biological agents capable of killing hundreds of thousands.

Hussein seems determined to hold on to that weapons capability whatever the cost to the Iraqi people, which is why Clinton on Sunday again bluntly called for a new government in Baghdad if normal life in Iraq is again to be made possible. Read that as an invitation to some patriotic or ambitious group of Iraqi generals to at last do away with Hussein. Read it that way, but in the light of Hussein’s grisly talent for eliminating all real and suspected opponents, there’s no great expectation that such a thing might soon come to pass.