U.S. Says Iraq Is Developing Banned Arms

U.S. officials have presented U.N. Security Council members with what the Americans say is new evidence that Iraq is developing long-range missiles in defiance of international sanctions, diplomats here said Friday.

The U.S. also has reached agreement with Russia on a long list of items of potential military use that Iraq will no longer be allowed to import, the diplomats said. An American-backed council resolution imposing the new trade controls on Iraq is expected to be introduced within a few days, they said.

On Friday, after three days of inconclusive talks with U.N. officials here, Iraqi officials called for further negotiations on the possible return of weapons inspectors to their country. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used the same wording to describe their discussions--”useful and frank”--and said they hope to meet again within a month.

Annan said Iraq is still seeking guarantees from the council that if it complies with the world body’s inspection demands, sanctions will be lifted, the United States and Britain will end their enforcement of “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq and--most important--there will be no punitive military action against the Persian Gulf country.

Annan said he noted Iraq’s concerns in a meeting here Friday with the council, which has in the past reiterated its insistence on the readmission of U.N. weapons inspectors.

U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, said they believe that recent intelligence briefings they gave here have helped convince council members and U.N. officials that Iraq is not bargaining in good faith.

In private meetings with council members two weeks ago, U.S. officials showed satellite photographs and documents that they said provide fresh evidence of an Iraqi project to build missiles with a range far beyond the 100-mile limit stipulated in binding U.N. resolutions after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990.

The unpublicized presentations were given first to the other four permanent Security Council members--Russia, China, France and Britain--and later, during a three-hour luncheon meeting at the Norwegian ambassador’s residence, to the 10 rotating members.

“I thought it was persuasive, but I’m not a specialist,” said Ole Peter Kolby, Norway’s representative to the U.N. and the host of the gathering. Kolby said in an interview that the photographs depicted what James B. Cunningham, the U.S. deputy representative, told them were long-range missile parts and missile-launching installations.

“I believe that these pictures were what they said they were,” Kolby said.

Two other U.N. diplomats, who requested anonymity, confirmed the account of the meeting.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United Nations sent inspectors into Iraq looking for evidence that the Iraqis were developing nuclear, chemical and biological arms, as well as missiles capable of delivering such weapons.

After inspectors complained that their access to known and suspected military facilities was being blocked, and the Iraqis charged that U.N. monitors were committing espionage for U.S. intelligence agencies, the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998. Days later, U.S. and British warplanes launched punitive bombing strikes.

Iraqi army defectors and exiled opposition leaders have alleged since then that Iraq continues to try to build ballistic missiles capable of sending conventional or nuclear warheads to targets as distant as Tel Aviv. The U.S. satellite photos are said by Western diplomats to corroborate some of the defectors’ accusations.

U.S. officials confirmed accounts of the recent briefings but declined to give further details about the photographs and intelligence reports they presented. They also requested that their names not be used, as is common in diplomatic circles.

They said they believed council members were “impressed” by the presentations, increasing skepticism about Iraq’s intentions here.

American and British diplomats also have asserted in U.N. committees in recent months that Iraq has routinely circumvented the world body’s export controls through the undeclared shipment of crude oil by pipeline to Syria and subverted import constraints by illegally diverting heavy trucks and other goods to the military.

Other diplomats, though convinced that the new U.S. evidence is credible, were less certain of its impact on council members who have urged continued dialogue with the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“It is a question of waiting, and seeing, and we just don’t know yet,” said a British diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

But Russia, long a caustic critic of U.S. and U.N. policies toward Iraq, has agreed to a detailed catalog of hundreds of products--from radio scanners to laboratory equipment to infrared binoculars--that Iraq would no longer be able to import without specific prior U.N. approval, Western diplomats said. The agreement was reached after months of U.S. negotiations with Russia, which since the imposition of sanctions a decade ago has been Iraq’s biggest supplier of advanced industrial equipment.

List of Restricted Goods Part of New Sanctions

In the next few days, diplomats here say, the United States and Russia will jointly propose a Security Council resolution that would make the list of restricted goods the cornerstone of a new sanctions system that would go into effect next month.

Members of the Russian delegation could not be reached Friday night to confirm the agreement. In November, when it extended the present sanctions regime for another six months, the council endorsed in principle its replacement with a streamlined and toughened system of import controls. But the main stumbling block to its implementation was Russia’s objections to the proposed new controls on specific products that it had been providing to Iraq.

Although the new resolution is almost certain to be opposed by Syria, the Arab bloc’s current representative on the council, Western diplomats say they expect support from all veto-wielding permanent members and most of the rest of the 15-member body.

That doesn’t mean that the Security Council has suddenly embraced the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, however.

The Russians, with arm’s-length French and Chinese support, recently have revived demands that the Security Council give Iraq a clear timetable and explicit conditions for the eventual end of sanctions if Baghdad agrees to admit inspectors.

And should Iraq refuse again to let them in, the Russians contend that military action against Baghdad would still require the consent of the Security Council.

“It is our position that any nation that decides to use force, not in self-defense, should seek the approval of the United Nations,” Sergei V. Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the world body, told reporters here last month.

Britain, the one constant U.S. ally in the council and in the skies over Iraq, has guardedly welcomed Iraq’s recent diplomatic gestures, while Washington has remained scornfully skeptical. Polls in Britain show a growing majority oppose U.S. military action against Iraq, with opposition increasing sharply if British troops were to be engaged.

“[British Prime Minister] Tony Blair may be ready for war with Iraq, but the British public is not,” said a senior U.N. official, who asked not to be named.

Indeed, there is scarcely a diplomat to be found outside the U.S. mission here who speaks favorably--privately or publicly--about the Bush administration’s military threats against Iraq.

Most U.N. members say they agree that Iraq should admit weapons inspectors. Yet it is only the threat of American military action, many diplomats here acknowledge privately, that has led Iraq to reconsider its opposition to the U.N. arms monitors.

As was evident when Iraq announced last month that it was cutting off its oil exports to protest Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinians, it is increasingly clear here that economic pressure alone--through U.N. trade controls or other means--is unlikely to force policy change in Baghdad, much less bring a new regime to power. This expensive political gesture has already cost Iraq as much as $1 billion.

Iraq Wealthier Than Most of Its Neighbors

But while Iraq’s standard of living has fallen below the levels of other big Persian Gulf oil producers, the country remains wealthier than most of its neighbors. After a decade of political isolation and trade sanctions, Iraq’s per-capita income was still about 10% higher than it was in 1990, thanks to petroleum earnings, and considerably above the average incomes of Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Iran.

Staple foods, medicine and other civilian goods have become more readily available after Iraq and the U.N. agreed to a revised sanctions plan in 1996. Since then, all declared earnings from Iraq’s oil exports--now totaling more than $52billion--have been deposited in a special U.N. account. About a quarter of these funds are set aside to settle claims against Iraq from Kuwait and to underwrite the U.N.’s enforcement expenses--including the costs of its weapons inspection unit.

Most of the rest of the money is slated for imports of civilian goods, ranging from food and medicine to machinery and replacement parts for oil rigs. A U.N. office has approved $32 billion in contracts for “humanitarian supplies and equipment” since 1996, though just $19.6 billion has been delivered.