Iraq Gives U.N. Weapons List, Prods Kuwaitis

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made a grand gesture of cooperation with the United Nations on Saturday, turning over a nearly 12,000-page inventory of materials he possesses that could be used for weapons.

But almost immediately, his open hand of conciliation closed into a fist.

At nearly the same time that Iraqi officials handed over their report in Baghdad, Hussein released a statement on Kuwait, apologizing to the emirate’s people for Iraq’s 1990 invasion but also criticizing the leadership and applauding terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers there.

“It’s his first mistake,” said Henri J. Barkey, chairman of the international relations department at Lehigh University and a former Iraq analyst at the State Department. “Saddam is trying to appeal to the Arab street, but I think it’s going to backfire.”

Kuwait, which lies between Iraq’s southern border and the Persian Gulf, would be an important staging ground for a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The royal family’s cooperation with the U.S. has been a contentious issue among Kuwaitis who view the Bush administration as a foe of Islam. An American serviceman posted there for exercises was killed by Islamic extremists, and Hussein’s lauding of the attack seemed designed to incite more.

In a letter read by Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf on Iraqi television, Hussein apologized to God and Kuwait for the 1990 invasion that sparked the Persian Gulf War. But he also condemned Kuwaiti leaders for conspiring with “infidels” against Iraq and for using the country’s oil money for personal gain.

“Why will not the faithful, the devoted and the holy warriors in Kuwait meet with their counterparts in Iraq under the tent of their creator,” the letter asked, “instead of under the tent of London or Washington and the Zionist entity [Israel] to discuss their affairs, foremost the jihad [holy struggle] against the occupation of infidel armies?”

Instead of winning support for Iraq, some analysts said, Hussein’s statements could turn sympathies against him.

“The Kuwaiti royal family was always against him. It will steel their determination because he’s going over their head and asking the Kuwaiti people to rebel against their support of the U.S.,” Barkey said. “It might also show other Arab leaders that Saddam Hussein is still convinced he can take over Kuwait and lead the Arab world.”

Indeed, Kuwaiti officials swiftly rejected the apology, with Information Minister Sheik Ahmed al Fahd al Sabah saying, “The speech contained incitement and encouragement of terrorist acts.”

Hussein’s letter was part of a pattern of mixed messages, a charm offensive designed to stave off war. But his efforts strike many as more offensive than charming.

The information turned over Saturday takes up 11,807 pages, along with 352 pages of supplements and computer disks containing 529 megabytes of data allegedly detailing all materials in Iraq that could be used for weapons or missiles, whether they were intended for military or peaceful purposes. The documents were to be flown to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and U.N. headquarters in New York so that officials can remove any information that could be used by others to produce weapons.

But the translation and analyses required mean that it could be weeks before the report can be distributed to the 15 U.N. Security Council members.

Two days earlier, Hussein called on the people of Iraq to support U.N. weapons inspections to prove that the country has eliminated its weapons programs and deserves an end to a decade of sanctions. But the same day, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan called the inspectors “spies” for U.S. and Israeli intelligence services.

Inspectors completed their first week of searches for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons materials without impediment, but U.N. and U.S. officials were not quite ready to call Iraq helpful.

“I’m not using the word ‘cooperation’ because it’s a little early,” Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said Friday. “If they are in fact hiding anything, well, that wouldn’t be cooperation.”

Although Iraqi officials ceremoniously handed over their new “Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Declaration” of Iraq’s weapons Saturday, a full day before the Security Council’s deadline, few observers expect it to be a model of honesty.

During the previous U.N. inspection regime, from 1991 to 1998, Iraq turned in eight separate “full, final and complete declarations” of its weapons programs, none of which turned out to be either full, final or complete, former chief inspector Richard Butler has said.

For example, Iraq denied having manufactured VX, a lethal nerve gas. However, inspectors “found documents regarding VX in buildings that had been bombed during Desert Storm and found VX in soil samples nearby,” a senior U.S. administration official said. “Confronted by the evidence, Iraq admitted producing VX.”

Last week, Bush administration officials said they had evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, despite Baghdad’s repeated denials. They said that in itself was enough to put Iraq in “material breach” of the U.N. resolution authorizing inspections -- even before the report had been handed over.

That inventory is “the first true test of whether Iraq is willing to cooperate and to be disarmed,” the senior U.S. official said Friday. “Inspections were designed as a means to verify that Iraq had voluntarily given up” its weapons of mass destruction programs, he said. Inspectors were not meant to engage in a massive game of hide and seek in a country the size of California, he said, but ideally should be led to weapons sites by Iraqi authorities or through tips from local scientists.

“Without cooperation by Iraq, inspections cannot work. Iraq will always have the power to deceive, deny and ultimately to defy U.N. inspectors,” the official said.

In recent weeks, the Bush administration has faced criticism for failing to produce a “smoking gun” of evidence to support the president’s claim that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, including a program to obtain nuclear weapons.

Anticipating that the regime’s declaration could prompt a revival of such charges, administration officials stressed how difficult it is to catch Iraq in a lie.

Any expectation that the United States would be able to wave satellite photos of Iraqi weapons in front of the world, as the U.S. was able to do during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, is not realistic given the nature of today’s intelligence and the sophisticated Iraqi concealment and disinformation operations, the U.S. official said.

“Our adversaries have over the years learned how to deny us information from various sources. In 1962, you could have [then-U.N. Ambassador] Adlai Stevenson stand up and present photographs of missile sites being set up in Cuba. That was 40 years ago. In those 40 years, countries like Iraq and others have become very practiced at denying us the ability to collect those types of information,” he said.

Although there has been much speculation about such a surprise scenario, the administration is apparently hoping that, in time, Hussein will trip himself up.

“There is a long pattern of noncompliance that exists now,” said the official. “I don’t think it should take that long.”

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Farley reported from the United Nations and Efron from Washington.