Compromise Broached on Issue of Arms Inspectors in Iraq

Even though Iraq’s vice president said his country will not allow U.N. arms inspectors back into the nation, members of the Security Council think that Baghdad might change its mind.

Nizar Hamdoun, Iraq’s deputy foreign minister, left open the possibility of compromise Friday--if the council engages Iraq in a discussion of its concerns about the new inspection regime.

“Compromise will only be done when the council itself gets engaged with Iraq in a discussion,” he told CNN. “It has not happened yet.”

Under U.N. resolutions, economic sanctions against Iraq cannot be lifted until inspectors report that Baghdad is free of its weapons of mass destruction. Hamdoun said Iraq can live with sanctions “forever.”

But some council members believe that Iraq eventually will accept the return of inspectors. U.N. Ambassador Arnold Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands said Thursday that he believes that the Iraqis will change their minds.

“They have to say ‘yes’ . . . and if they don’t react, then we’ll just have to wait. But I cannot imagine that that is ‘no’ forever,” he said.

Iraqi leaders repeatedly have said they won’t deal with a new Iraq policy adopted by the council in December, whose primary aim is to return weapons inspectors for the first time since December 1998.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan’s remarks Thursday were the most negative to date.

“There shall be no return of the so-called inspection teams. We reject the infiltration by spies using such cover,” the official Iraqi News Agency quoted Ramadan as saying.

There was little surprise among Security Council members at the vice president’s remarks.