Push for Iraq Inspectors Off to ‘Good Start’

Iraq is signaling a seeming new willingness to admit international weapons inspectors, foreign diplomats and U.N. officials said Friday after a closed-door review of the previous day’s meeting here between Iraq’s foreign minister and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But U.S. officials said they remain highly skeptical of Iraq’s intentions, despite what all sides described as an unexpectedly cordial and “constructive” exchange here Thursday.

In nearly four hours of talks in his office, the Iraqi delegation raised legal and logistical questions about compliance with U.N. demands, but in contrast to previous meetings did not object to the inspections in principle, Annan told the Security Council. Iraq’s concerns were posed as “questions,” not “preconditions,” Annan said Friday.

“We are at a very early stage, so we should not claim success or failure yet,” Annan cautioned in remarks to reporters later. “We are at a very, very early beginning. But it was a good start.” Annan agreed to meet again with the Iraqis next month.

The United States and Britain--Iraq’s two unrelenting adversaries on the council, with jet fighters patrolling Iraqi airspace and officials calling openly for President Saddam Hussein’s ouster--took pains to endorse Annan’s decision to continue talks with Baghdad.

“We support his effort to conduct this dialogue,” said James B. Cunningham, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. “He kept the focus where it should be properly, which is on . . . the need to implement the resolutions.”

But the U.S. does not foresee an imminent Iraqi turnaround, Cunningham indicated, noting that the Iraqis discussed but did not agree to terms for arms inspections in their meeting with Annan. “He did not get a positive response from the Iraqis,” Cunningham said.

Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador here, had a markedly more optimistic reading of the talks. “We are approaching the stage where we both have an inspection team ready to go and when we seem to have the beginnings of an indication that they may indeed be welcome,” he said.

Hans Blix, the Swedish head of the U.N. weapons inspection unit that would travel to Iraq, who also participated in Thursday’s talks, told the council that his team would be ready to begin work on short notice. Since being established at the end of 1999, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, has maintained a small management team in New York while recruiting and training more than 200 specialists in chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry who could serve as inspectors. The commission is still contracting consultants on a standby basis, Blix said Friday.

Blix said he pledged to the Iraqis that his team would be politically independent and technically objective in its assessments of their arms programs. Blix told the Iraqis that, unlike the previous U.N. inspections unit, his commission and its employees work directly and exclusively for the U.N., with funds from U.N.-monitored Iraqi oil revenues. Iraq had charged that previous U.N. inspectors were also working for Western intelligence services, and U.S. officials later conceded that the accusation was true.

Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., said this week’s meeting could be “a first step” toward Iraqi compliance with U.N. demands. But he reiterated Russian demands that the Security Council set out more precise terms for judging Iraqi compliance and removing economic penalties, including the U.N.’s collection of Iraqi oil income.

“They need to specify criteria and time frames for the suspension of sanctions, including the trigger,” Lavrov said. “The trigger should be UNMOVIC, and not some value judgment by one or two members of the council.”

American diplomats said this dispute is likely to remain academic, as they are convinced that Hussein will continue to spurn inspections because Iraq is still illegally developing weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. officials believe that it was only the threat of U.S. military action that brought Iraq to the U.N. this week, a view shared by many Western diplomats and U.N. officials who nonetheless oppose such action. Should inspectors find that Iraq is in fact building or storing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, that would provide legal and political support for U.S. military strikes, current and former U.S. diplomats note.

“From our point of view, we have already delayed far too long,” Cunningham said. “Iraq should have complied a long time ago, and inspectors should already be back in.”