Annan Calls Any Military Action Against Iraq Now an ‘Unwise’ Step

Western military action against Iraq in the near future could disrupt global anti-terrorism initiatives and open dangerous rifts in a region already grappling with the Afghanistan war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday.

“I haven’t seen any evidence linking Iraq to the 11th of September, and any attempt to do that [take military action against Iraq] could exacerbate the situation and raise tensions in the region,” Annan said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York.

“I think it would be unwise to attack Iraq now,” he said.

The greatest priority for most countries in the Middle East remains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it would be unwise to target Iraq until the spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians can be reversed, he suggested.

Yet Annan held out little hope that the Iraqi government would cede to world pressure and reopen its doors to U.N. weapons inspectors any time soon. The Iraqi foreign minister “had nothing new to tell me” in a meeting a few weeks ago, he said.

“I don’t see any signal that inspectors will be allowed to go back, but we live in a world where unpredictable things happen,” Annan said.

Specialists at the U.N. task force charged with monitoring Iraq’s weapons programs say that their intelligence sources--most from Western governments--have no indications of Iraq providing weapons or training to the international terrorist networks now being targeted by the United Nations. Yet they remain concerned, they say, about the possible smuggling of plutonium and uranium across Iraq’s unpatrolled borders and about the stores of biochemical weapons believed to be held by the Baghdad regime.

The U.N. inspectors are also dubious about the punitive economic impact of either the current or future trade restraints, noting that Iraq’s imports have risen to record levels despite these constraints and that per capita income has increased in real terms since 1990, before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait prompted the imposition of sanctions.

But the adoption of a new sanctions regime by the United Nations this coming June--with the support of all five permanent members of the Security Council--should increase pressure on Iraq to comply with demands for inspections, Annan said. The new sanctions are designed to ease the entry of legitimate Iraqi imports while tightening controls on goods with possible military applications, he noted.

Foreign diplomats here have said privately that they considered U.S. support for one final six-month extension of the current sanctions system a signal that Washington would not move militarily against Iraq before the prolongation lapsed.

Without compelling new evidence of Iraqi support for Al Qaeda specifically or terrorism generally, the United States would be unable to muster support within the Security Council for such action until the new sanctions plan is put into place, said one Western diplomat, who asked not to be named.

“They would be risking the unanimity that they have just achieved,” he said, expressing a view held by several Security Council members who have been critical of U.S. policy toward Iraq. But after June, if Iraq continues to bar the doors to inspectors, the “implications for Saddam [Hussein] are ominous,” he said.

For now, though, the reconstruction of Afghanistan and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are the two central challenges for the world community in the Middle East and nearby regions, Annan argued.

Two Regional Issues on U.N. Agenda Today

As one indication of this sense of regional crisis overload, the United Nations will be addressing both issues simultaneously today after days of internal debate.

The Security Council is working behind closed doors on a resolution that would authorize British-led peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan, with members still divided on such key issues as the command structure, size, duration and defense prerogatives of the force.

John Negroponte, the U.S. representative at the United Nations, said he expects the resolution to be adopted today, barely in time for peacekeepers to be dispatched to Kabul, the Afghan capital, before the interim government takes power there Saturday.

The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, announced that it will be holding an emergency session--also today--to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The session is being convened at the urging of Arab member states as a protest against the U.S. veto over the weekend of a proposed Security Council resolution recommending an outside “monitoring mechanism” as a means of safeguarding civilian lives.

Annan, expressing his own support Wednesday for some new “collective international initiative in the region,” strongly criticized both Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government for not doing enough to make new negotiations possible there.

“There is a consensus that Arafat has the capacity to do much more to control Palestinian violence,” he said. Yet as long as Israeli “bombing and shelling is going on” in and around Arafat’s own security headquarters, it is difficult for the Palestinian Authority president to act, he added.

Israel should not make negotiations “conditional on total peace,” because that gives terrorists who oppose such talks the power to keep them from taking place, Annan said.

“They should stay at the table and keep talking,” he said.