Iraq’s Apparent Compliance Fails to Lift Regional Anxiety

Iraqi officials allowed U.N. weapons inspectors immediate access to a presidential palace Tuesday, but Baghdad’s apparent compliance with a tough new Security Council resolution has done little to lower regional anxiety over the prospect of war.

When weapons inspectors were in Iraq four years ago, the regime balked at allowing unannounced inspections of President Saddam Hussein’s many lavish compounds. This time, there had been a great deal of uncertainty over whether Iraq would let inspectors into the compounds, or would defy the United Nations and risk attack.

But even after the gates to the Al Sajoud palace swung open Tuesday, there was little sense that the prospect of military conflict had diminished. As the deadline for Iraq to turn over a statement outlining any of its banned weapons programs looms this weekend, too many other signs suggest that war is inevitable, observers said.

“I have to say, I am pessimistic, but I am hoping for the best,” said Hisham Youssef, spokesman for the 22-member Arab League.

In recent days, President Bush has said Iraq’s efforts at disarming are “not encouraging,” and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that if inspectors don’t find anything, it merely means that Iraq has hidden its weapons very well.

“The United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The U.K. knows that they have weapons of mass destruction. Any country on the face of the Earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” Rumsfeld said.

The U.S. and its allies are trying to counter any sympathy that Iraq’s compliance might engender, especially in the Arab world, with a multifaceted campaign showcasing Iraq as an “evildoer.” Britain released a dossier Monday outlining human rights violations in Iraq; the U.S. continues to bomb suspected military targets in southern Iraq’s “no-fly” zone; and on Tuesday, Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said an Iraqi boat fired on two Kuwaiti coast guard vessels in Kuwaiti waters.

And although U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised Iraq’s cooperation so far, he had trouble mustering a great deal of optimism. “This is only the beginning,” he said Tuesday at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Taken together, these events have overshadowed Iraq’s public relations efforts, leaving the perception among many in the region that the exercise of inspections is an expensive, complex, drawn-out prelude to war.

“U.S. and British efforts aimed at condemning Iraq by any means possible confirm the two countries’ intentions to start a war at any price,” said a commentary in the Qatari daily Al Rayah on Tuesday.

Weapons inspectors resumed their work in Iraq last week armed with a Security Council mandate that gives them the right to go anywhere at any time, with no warning. Should Iraq fail to comply, Resolution 1441 threatens “severe consequences,” which can be taken to mean a U.S.-led invasion.

But as their first week of work ended without incident, Bush tried to downplay the importance of inspections. The issue in Iraq “is not the inspectors,” he said Tuesday at the Louisiana state fairgrounds in Shreveport.

“The issue is whether or not Mr. Saddam Hussein will disarm like he said he would,” Bush said. “We’re not interested in a hide-and-seek inside Iraq.”

This morning, inspectors went to the Al Tuwaithi compound operated by Iraq’s nuclear power authority in Salman Pak, south of the capital.

From the moment the inspectors arrived in Baghdad, the Iraqi regime and the teams searching for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons have tried to demonstrate a willingness to work together. The inspectors started off slowly, going to sites that were not deemed to be controversial. Iraq appeared to readily comply with all demands, allowing inspectors free and immediate access.

But the Security Council resolution is studded with trip wires. One includes demands for access to presidential sites, and Iraq seemed to step over that one successfully Tuesday.

The most sensitive, however, is pegged to Sunday, when Iraq must turn over the statement listing everything in its arsenal. The U.S. and Britain say banned weapons programs exist; Iraq insists they do not. Iraqi officials have reaffirmed their position in recent days, and if the regime sticks to that line -- which is not at all certain given its history -- it could be a trigger for war.

“We are going to deliver this declaration in the proper time on the 7th of this month,” Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, the head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said Tuesday. “Of course the declaration will have new elements. But these new elements will not, shall we say, necessarily include a declaration of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. We are a country devoid of weapons of mass destruction.”

Iraq has tried to present itself as a victim willing to comply with demands that it says violate its sovereignty. But there already are signs of strain. At one inspection site recently, protesters undoubtedly working with government authorization hung a banner attacking America. Perhaps more ominous was a U.N. report saying inspectors had discovered that equipment was missing from the Karama ballistics design plant in Baghdad, a rocket factory previously bombed by the U.S.

Iraqi officials said the missing equipment had been either destroyed in the bombing or transferred to another site. But because it is mandatory that previously inspected and tagged items not be moved, such incidents could, if cumulative, be used to add credibility to Washington’s suspicions.

“There is a psychological war being waged at the moment by the U.S., aided by the U.K.’s Labor Party headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, against Iraq,” said Mohammed Saleh Musfir, a political science professor at Qatar University. “They are using every method possible to find excuses to attack Iraq.”

Four years ago, the United States cited Iraqi officials’ refusal to allow unannounced inspections of presidential palaces as one of the reasons for a U.S.-led bombing campaign.

This time, nervous guards opened the gates early Tuesday when half a dozen U.N. vehicles pulled up at one entrance and another convoy pulled up at a second. The inspectors spent an hour and a half inside the palace, which has offices and living quarters. They said nothing as they drove off.

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Slackman reported from Cairo and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers John J. Goldman at the United Nations, Esther Schrader in Washington and James Gerstenzang in Shreveport contributed to this report.