‘No Second Chance’ for Baghdad

With the U.S. rallying the rest of the Security Council to take a hard line on what it calls Iraq’s continued deception, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Monday that there would be “no second chance” for Iraq to correct its massive arms declaration and avoid a military intervention.

Even before the elected 10 members received an edited version of Iraq’s arms declaration today, analysts from the U.S., Britain and France had already concluded that the weapons inventory is full of holes. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix concedes it may leave unanswered questions.

But while Blix might like to give Iraq a chance to clarify its report, Washington is taking a much tougher stance, reflecting frustration in the White House at the prospect that the U.N. inspection process will be too lengthy and inconclusive. After a week of intensive analysis, Powell said that U.S. doubts about Iraq’s ability to fully disclose its weapons of mass destruction programs had proved “well founded.”

“We said at the very beginning that we approached it with skepticism, and the information I have received so far is that that skepticism is well founded. There are problems with the declaration,” Powell told a news conference after talks with visiting Japanese officials.

“We are sharing the problems we see with UNMOVIC and the IAEA, and we’re in discussions with the permanent members of the Security Council.... Then statements will be forthcoming, I expect, toward the end of the week,” Powell said, using first the initials of the U.N. inspection commission for Iraq and then those of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

While Blix has deflected questions about what he thinks should happen next, saying that he is “just a servant of the Security Council,” council members aside from the U.S. rely heavily on his recommendations. At a recent news conference, the 74-year-old Swedish diplomat said cautiously that “we would not exclude that we would ask them questions” about gaps in the declaration.

But as U.S. intelligence continues to pore over the 11,807 pages of documents, the White House warned Iraq on Monday that Baghdad would not have a second chance to correct or add to the list to avoid military intervention. The Bush administration is planning how and when to share what it considers key intelligence to smoke out hidden caches of weapons and the scientists who worked on them.

“I think it was abundantly plain, from the will of the United Nations, this was Iraq’s last chance to inform the world in an accurate, complete and full way what weapons of mass destruction they possessed,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters Monday.

Fleischer said that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had already had 16 opportunities to fully disclose any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and should not have more.

“That was plain to all going into this one last final-chance process,” he said.

The United States and Britain are both turning up the heat on Iraq.

In an interview with an Arab newspaper released Monday, Powell denied that the Bush administration had already made the decision to go to war as soon as next month. At the same time, he said, the United States believes the type of rule in Iraq must change.

“It remains our policy to change the regime until such time as the regime changes itself,” Powell told Al Quds al Arabi. “So far, we cannot be sure that he is cooperating.... He continues to give us statements that suggest he is not in possession of weapons of mass destruction when we know he is.”

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that “action should follow” if Baghdad is found to be in material breach of the latest U.N. resolution on weapons inspections. In September, Blair said that he had intelligence showing “beyond doubt” that Hussein had been continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction.

A thick dossier compiled by British intelligence services and analysts in September portrayed Iraqi efforts to produce chemical and biological weapons, develop nuclear arms and extend the range of ballistic missiles used to deliver them.

Iraq’s weapons declaration, handed over Dec. 7, apparently provides few details on materials that were unaccounted for when weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998 ahead of a U.S.-British bombing raid. Although there has been no formal pronouncement from London on the veracity of the declaration, British officials have been saying the report “is disappointing and that there are gaps,” said a British diplomat. “But they’re still up to their eyeballs in the materials.”

In Iraq on Monday, inspectors continued surprise visits to suspected weapons sites, as nuclear experts in Vienna began to analyze air, soil and water samples for traces of radioactivity that could contradict Iraq’s assertions it has stopped its nuclear arms programs. The atomic energy agency said it hopes to have results by Jan. 27, when the inspectors are to report to the Security Council.

The members of the inspection team now number more than 100, with some experts concentrating on alleged biological and chemical weapons sites and some focusing on Iraq’s nuclear sectors. Inspectors searched at least six Iraqi sites Monday, including a complex near Al Tuwaitha where Iraqi scientists once worked on a nuclear bomb.