U.N. Arms Inspectors Walk Tall as They Return to Iraq

When U.N. arms inspectors hastily pulled out of Baghdad last week, military strikes against Iraq appeared inevitable, and no one knew when, or if, the team would resume its mission of finding and dismantling Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

But what was shaping up to be a long vacation was cut short by President Saddam Hussein’s eleventh-hour decision Saturday to retreat from a showdown with the U.N. Security Council over cooperating with the arms inspections.

So Tuesday, 80 members of the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, and six inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency came back--unpacking equipment, setting up computers and communications gear and getting ready to get back to the routine business of weapons monitoring.

This time, they returned knowing that if the Iraqi government tries once again to limit or block their work in the coming weeks, U.S. and British forces remain in the region--and are prepared to unleash a punishing military barrage against Iraq.

So far, the Iraqis are offering only positive signals, one senior U.N. official said Tuesday. “They have made it clear that they stand by their commitments to extend full cooperation,” said Prakash Shah, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy to Iraq.

The promises of good behavior were echoed by Gen. Amir Saadi, Hussein’s scientific advisor. “We’ll do our best to facilitate UNSCOM’s work,” he said in an interview with CNN. Regarding Richard Butler, the chief U.N. arms inspector whose dismissal Baghdad had demanded, Saadi added, “We have to deal with whoever is in charge.”

Irritated by intrusive inspections seeking evidence of weapons concealment, on Aug. 5 Iraq limited the inspectors’ work to routine monitoring of specific locations. Then, on Oct. 31, it ended cooperation altogether, setting off a crisis in which the United States and Britain prepared to launch massive bombing attacks and missile raids on Iraq.

Iraq said it cut off cooperation because it saw no sign that the U.N. Security Council ever intended to lift economic sanctions imposed on Hussein’s regime after its 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Officials here say the sanctions have contributed to the deaths of 1.5 million people in the past eight years.

With U.S. bombers already in the air streaking toward Iraq late Saturday, Hussein capitulated. On Sunday, President Clinton acknowledged the Iraqi reversal, clearing the way for the UNSCOM staff to come back.

“All the inspectors know that they have a job to do, and they want to do it,” their spokeswoman, Caroline Cross, said after the group arrived aboard a C-130 Hercules that had flown 2 1/2 hours from Bahrain to a military airport about 50 miles west of Baghdad.

U.N. officials say the Iraqi commitment to cooperate fully will be tested by the inspectors in coming weeks. If there are any instances of Iraqi evasion or noncooperation, Cross said, they will be reported to Butler in New York rather than announced publicly.

“Now is really the time when we step out of the media spotlight and get back to our work,” Cross said.

Iraq has had a litany of complaints about the arms inspectors--at various times accusing them of everything from rude and loutish behavior to being spies for the United States and Israel.

Asked about allegations of arrogant behavior, Cross said “there may have been some high-spirited antics in the past. At this moment, it’s definitely in the past. . . . We have a well-behaved, professional body of people, and it is going to stay that way.”

The staff spent its first day back getting its offices up and running. The first routine inspections were planned for today, and technicians also planned to change the tapes in video cameras left running at sensitive sites in their absence--about 30 to 40 sites in Iraq are kept under UNSCOM’s constant “technical surveillance.”

The returning staff members are mostly from the monitoring and verification side of the operation, which is charged with maintaining cameras and air-sampling devices at sites suspected of being part of Iraq’s efforts to build long-range missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Butler, in New York, puts together specialized multinational teams for more aggressive inspections of sites at which the U.N. agency believes there may be evidence of hidden arms. The first of these inspections, expected in the next week or two, will present the most difficult test of Iraq’s new pledge of cooperation.

Diplomats said Butler plans to ask for documents that Iraq has previously refused to hand over.

It was not known precisely what he will request, but one document found in July when inspectors searched Iraq’s air force headquarters listed the amount of weaponry Baghdad had that was capable of being filled with chemical and biological agents.

Inspectors looked at the document but were not given a copy--which could provide information about the kinds of biological and chemical materials Iraq might still have.

UNSCOM also is deeply interested in Iraq’s production of the nerve gas VX and in whether the gas has been loaded into warheads. Baghdad has denied that VX was placed on missiles; laboratory tests of warhead fragments have been contradictory and inconclusive.

At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats stressed Tuesday that Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions requiring elimination of all weapons of mass destruction would not automatically lead to the lifting of sanctions.

Underscoring that point, chief U.S. delegate Peter Burleigh appeared at a news conference Tuesday with a Kuwaiti official who said the whereabouts of 605 people taken prisoner by Iraq’s troops during the occupation of Kuwait remain unknown.

“For America, [the prisoner issue] is an issue that has a lot of resonance,” Burleigh said. “If and when the Security Council does a comprehensive review, it will be one of the subject matters.

“We don’t expect the comprehensive review to result in the lifting of sanctions,” he predicted, citing such non-disarmament issues as missing Kuwaiti property. “In all the categories, there are unanswered questions.”

Cross, the UNSCOM spokeswoman, said that the inspectors, who declined to meet with reporters Tuesday, were in an upbeat and disciplined frame of mind as they returned. She said she could tell the difference as they boarded their plane in Bahrain.

When they left Baghdad last Wednesday, everyone was subdued and quiet. Returning Tuesday, they were all smiles and chatty, she said.

“We’re looking forward to a productive and professional relationship with the Iraqi authorities over the next few days,” she said. “Time will tell.”

In addition to the weapons inspectors, about 120 U.N. humanitarian aid workers came back Tuesday after a 600-mile drive from Amman, Jordan. They were among about 150 U.N. humanitarian aid workers who were evacuated from Iraq last week because of the threat of U.S. bombing. Almost all have now returned.

Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Goldman from the United Nations.