Iraqi Parliament Rebuffs U.N.; Hussein Move Next

The Iraqi parliament unanimously rejected a U.N. resolution Tuesday calling on Baghdad to allow the return of weapons inspectors as the first step toward disarming. The vote didn’t necessarily move the region any closer to war, however, because Iraq’s official response rests with President Saddam Hussein.

One possible hint of Hussein’s plans came when he authorized his older son, Uday, to deliver a letter to parliament Tuesday asking lawmakers to accept the resolution that they had denounced a day earlier as a pretext for war and a violation of the country’s sovereignty. One state-run newspaper, Al Iraq, said the matter called for “quiet wisdom,” which political analysts took as a reference to Hussein.

Parliament’s rejection could serve to register Iraq’s strong opposition to the resolution while at the same time letting Hussein play the role of moderate peacemaker if he accedes to U.N. demands. By accepting, he could also play for time and shift the focus from a military solution to a diplomatic one.

The White House dismissed the Iraqi vote as “pure political theater.”

In his letter to parliament, the younger Hussein, presumed to be speaking for his father, warned Iraqis that they must be prepared for war regardless of Iraq’s response. He also urged Arab nations to cut off oil supplies to any country that attacks, or supports an attack on, Iraq, a call that oil producers consider impractical and are certain to reject.

“Why do we even discuss it [the resolution] when this is a trap to create a pretext to attack Iraq?” asked one Iraqi lawmaker, Adnan Rashid, who joined his colleagues in the two-day emergency session of parliament applauding each mention of “his excellency Mr. President, the holy warrior, leader Saddam Hussein.”

Parliament’s vote was largely irrelevant because only Hussein supporters are permitted to be members, and the assembly acts on the president’s command. The official decision will be made in the next few days by the Revolutionary Command Council, the nation’s highest governing body, which Hussein heads. The U.N. has set a Friday deadline for Iraq’s decision.

The resolution calls for U.N. arms inspectors to return to the country after a four-year hiatus and be given unrestricted access to suspected weapons sites. It gives inspectors the right to interview Iraqi scientists outside the country without the presence of Iraqi officials and demands the destruction of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Hussein says Iraq no longer has any weapons of mass destruction.

But a senior State Department official confirmed Tuesday that Iraq recently asked the U.N. for permission to buy 1.25 million doses of atropine, a drug used for treating heart attacks in small doses but effective in large doses as an antidote to nerve gas.

The high dosage that Iraq was seeking, as well as the huge number of doses, raised suspicions that Baghdad might be planning to use the drug to protect its own troops, or possibly troops and civilians, against any nerve gas it might use against invading U.S. troops.

U.N. weapons inspectors have said they believe that Iraq has stockpiles of deadly VX gas and sarin. Atropine is effective against both.

The U.S. official declined to name the prospective supplier of the atropine but said that the United States was discussing the matter with the Turkish government. Turkey is a major trading partner of Iraq.

Atropine is not on the list of items covered by U.N. sanctions against Iraq, so it could be difficult for the U.S. to demand that the U.N. halt the sale.

However, the U.S. official said, the Turkish and U.S. governments “have common concerns about Iraq and what Iraq has done in the past and might do again in the future,” implying that Turkey might cooperate in quashing sales by Turkish companies if the purchases were deemed to be primarily for military use.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan wouldn’t comment on the alleged order except to say it was something the U.S. “would look into very closely.”

“We do not need any more proof that Saddam Hussein possesses and is willing to use chemical and biological weapons,” McClellan said. “He has already used them on his own people. And I can assure you that the Department of Defense is going to do everything they can to protect our troops if they are called in to disarm Saddam Hussein.”

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking on ABC’s “Nightline” on Tuesday, said: “They might be trying to acquire atropine ... to either protect themselves or to make it appear to us that they’re trying to protect themselves. I’m not sure how many of these they actually acquired, and we’re taking a look at it now.”

As the clock ticks toward the Friday deadline on the resolution, the Bush administration has tried to avoid being drawn into speculation about what it will do if Hussein rejects the U.N. outright or tries to impose conditions on the unconditional inspections demanded by the U.S.

Uday Hussein told parliament in his letter that the resolution should be accepted “with limits on certain points but not, we say, conditions.” One of those points is the inclusion of Arabs on the inspection team, which is due to leave this week for Cyprus to set up a logistics base.

The team, led by Hans Blix, a Swede who headed the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997, has about 100 members from 49 nations. It includes eight Arabs: six Jordanians; one Moroccan; and one Egyptian, Mohammed Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Baradei met with Iraq’s ambassador to the U.N., Mohammed Douri, in New York on Monday and reiterated the Arab League position that Hussein’s acceptance of the resolution was the only hope of avoiding an invasion.

“What I tried to impress on him,” Baradei told Associated Press, “is that this should be a completely new phase with the demonstration of full cooperation and full transparency.”

After Tuesday’s vote in parliament, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that force will be used if Hussein fails to cooperate with the United Nations. France played a major role in slightly softening the language of the resolution.

If Hussein accepts the resolution, as many Arab diplomats believe is likely, he will do so with reluctance, believing his cooperation offers no guarantee that the United States won’t invade. Washington has said it would return to the U.N. Security Council before taking any military action if terms of the resolution are violated, but President Bush has insisted on his right to take any action necessary to protect the American people if the U.N. does not act.

“The Iraq regime is a dictatorship, and it is the choice of Saddam Hussein to determine whether he wants to disarm peacefully or if he wants to be disarmed by force,” McClellan said. “This is a final opportunity for him.”

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Lamb reported from Cairo and Efron from Washington. Times staff writer Edwin Chen also contributed to this report.