U.N., Iraq Play Waiting Game

The Security Council remained paralyzed Tuesday in its effort to force Iraq to resume cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors as it became clear that the latest confrontation with Baghdad has evolved into a waiting game, with each side gambling that it can outlast its adversary.

The Iraqis appear to be betting that regardless of their noncompliance with disarmament inspections, the international community is exhausted by the issue and will permit the economic sanctions imposed on Baghdad to gradually break down.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain, which found themselves virtually isolated last winter in calling for military strikes against Iraq, apparently hope that continued Iraqi intransigence eventually will prompt some countries sympathetic to Baghdad--notably France and the Arab states--to lose their patience with the government of President Saddam Hussein and endorse a tougher policy toward him.

So far, diplomats here acknowledge, there is no evidence of such a shift in Paris or in Arab capitals. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine recently suggested that Hussein’s military machine has been effectively defanged, and he referred to Iraq as “a broken country in that respect.”

Arab envoys, meanwhile, profess less concern about the threat posed by Iraq than about reports that Israel is among the countries that have provided intelligence information to U.N. weapons inspectors. They have taken up Iraqi suggestions that the inspectors may be unduly influenced by Israel.

On Tuesday, the council heard briefings by chief weapons inspector Richard Butler and Mohammed Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Both men said that Iraq’s decision in August to cut off most cooperation with inspectors had crippled their disarmament efforts and postponed when they could certify that Baghdad has disposed of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

Butler’s report also gave a detailed description of Iraqi evasions, lapses and deceptions and the questions they raise about the extent of Baghdad’s arsenal. Under U.N. resolutions that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Security Council cannot lift economic sanctions until Baghdad has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction.

The Security Council repeatedly has admonished Baghdad to resume working with the inspectors and has held out the prospect of a “comprehensive review” of its relationship with the Iraqis in return. But the Iraqi government has refused to budge, even after Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz spent more than a week at the U.N. last month conferring with Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others about the possibility of renewed cooperation.

According to Peter Burleigh, the chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations, the possibility of taking additional action aimed at forcing Iraq into compliance did not come up during Tuesday’s closed-door meeting. The council’s current strategy is to continue the sanctions indefinitely while urging Hussein to change his mind.

According to Butler’s report, the most troubling questions about Iraq’s potential arsenal continue to center on biological weapons. Independent experts have been unconvinced by Iraq’s claims that it has discontinued its biological warfare program, and inspectors have been unable to verify Iraq’s assertions that it has destroyed components for producing toxic agents and the missile warheads, bombs and aerosol generators capable of delivering them.

Butler’s report also asserts that:

* Iraq has not kept promises to provide documentation proving that 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas were destroyed during or after the Gulf War, as it has claimed.

* Serious unanswered questions remain about the amount of VX nerve gas produced in Iraq before the war and whether the military ever loaded it into weapons. Iraqi officials have given contradictory explanations of their VX program over the years and now refuse to discuss it.

* At Aziz’s direction, the government has refused to turn over to Butler a key document on chemical weapons munitions discovered by a U.N. inspector in July.

* Inspectors have been unable to verify the claimed destruction of about 50 proscribed long-range missiles. There are similar lapses in accounting for missile engines, warheads and propellants that Iraq is known to have had before the war.