Iraq Agrees on Details for New Inspections

Under intense international pressure, Iraq agreed Tuesday on details for new U.N. inspections to assess whether the country is developing weapons of mass destruction, but it continued to hold back access to some key sites.

The agreement stopped short of offering unfettered inspections of “presidential sites”--eight compounds covering a total of about 12 square miles and containing more than 1,000 buildings--as demanded by the Bush administration. Experts have said free access to these sites is needed to determine whether Iraq has accumulated nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as the missiles needed to deliver them.

Nonetheless, the Iraqis went further than many observers expected at this juncture, apparently hoping to divide the U.N. Security Council and keep Russia, France and China from acceding to U.S. and British demands for a new resolution mandating stringent, far more aggressive inspections backed by the threat of force.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who met with Iraqi representatives at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna, is scheduled to brief the Security Council on the agreement Thursday. If given the green light, he says, he could have inspectors on the ground in two weeks.

Initial reactions at United Nations headquarters in New York suggested that Iraq had gained at least some new support in the wake of Tuesday’s agreement. With British Prime Minister Tony Blair facing opposition within his ruling Labor Party to the use of force against Iraq and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisting that a new resolution is needed before inspections can proceed, it was a day in which advocates of a hard line toward Iraqi President Saddam Hussein found themselves on the defensive.

“We do not believe the inspection regime that existed previously is adequate to the challenge we’re facing today with Iraqi intransigence,” Powell told a news conference in Washington. He said there was no “magic calendar” dictating when inspectors should return.

“We do not believe they should go back in under the old inspection regime,” Powell said. “We do not believe they should go in until they have new instructions in the form of a new resolution.”

President Bush, speaking with reporters earlier in the day, urged the U.N. to stand up to Hussein.

“The United Nations must show its backbone,” he said. “And we’ll work with members of the Security Council to put a little calcium there.”

Despite events in Vienna, political observers at the U.N. still believe that Iraq eventually will face a more rigorous inspection regime, along with carefully defined consequences if it fails to comply. An Anglo-American draft resolution that began circulating quietly at the U.N. late Tuesday calls for the use of “all necessary means to restore international peace and security to the area” if Iraq fails to provide a complete list of any weapons of mass destruction within 30 days of the measure’s passage and does not allow unfettered movement of inspectors.

With the Vienna accord, the Iraqis “are agreeing to the easy stuff now,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“They are playing to their audience, which includes Russia, which has continued to say there is no need for a new, tougher resolution,” he added. “This is an effort to confine the U.N. Security Council to a simple reconfirmation of existing resolutions.”

The terms reached Tuesday in Vienna were essentially a restatement of the existing U.N. resolutions governing inspections. The two sides said they did not discuss a 1998 memorandum of understanding between the Iraqis and the U.N. that ended surprise inspections at the presidential sites, agreeing to leave that issue to the Security Council.

Amir Sadi, the leader of Iraq’s delegation, discounted the importance of inspecting the sites at all. “Quite honestly, I don’t understand why it is so critical,” he said.

From the inspectors’ viewpoint, Iraq’s agreement to a renewed inspection regime--the first since inspectors left the country four years ago--and the removal of limitations on some sites previously designated as “sensitive” reflected some progress.

“There is a willingness to accept inspections that has not existed before,” Blix told reporters in Vienna after the negotiations.

Blix said the Iraqis gave inspectors “immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access” to all locations except the presidential sites. He said that is considerably more access than inspectors had when they were forced to leave Iraq at the end of 1998.

The Iraqis also delivered four CD-ROMs with the records they are required to keep on the acquisition of any “dual-use” equipment--items that can have both military and civilian applications--as well as any changes in previously inspected sites, such as the movement of machines or construction of buildings.

The material is so voluminous that it will take days for U.N. teams to evaluate it, officials said.

The polite, accommodating tone that the Iraqis took in Vienna suggested an attempt to walk softly with U.N. officials while simultaneously repulsing U.S.-led efforts to require more rigorous inspections. However, tough language came from Baghdad.

In Iraq, an unidentified spokesman on Iraqi television called the intentions of the U.S. and Britain “evil.” The spokesman accused the two countries “of beating the war drums” to force Iraq to give up its sovereign rights.

Iraq’s chief concession in Vienna was its agreement to allow inspectors full access to dozens of key installations previously deemed “sensitive” by the Iraqis, often on an ad hoc basis. Inspectors could visit such sites only with prior notice and in the company of a senior Iraqi official.

At times, inspectors would arrive at such sites and be forced to wait at the entrance for hours--sometimes even a day--until an Iraqi official arrived. Often, only a small number of inspectors then were allowed to enter.

Former biological weapons inspector Timothy McCarthy, now at the Monterey Institute in California, recalled inspectors arriving for a surprise visit at the General Intelligence Service’s headquarters in 1997. They were stopped at the gate and forced to wait outside in the summer heat--nearly 130 degrees--for several hours until a sufficiently senior official appeared to escort them.

“We were standing on the top of white U.N. vehicles that are reflecting the heat and peering over the walls to see if there was any movement of vehicles while we waited,” McCarthy recalled. When an official finally showed up, only two of about 50 inspectors at the site were permitted to enter.

The Iraqis pledged Tuesday to make these sites as accessible as others.

Iraq also agreed to let inspectors fly into Saddam International Airport in Baghdad rather than the military airport about 50 miles away. Inspectors said the change not only will speed up their work but also shows a concrete sign of Iraq’s willingness to cooperate.

At U.N. headquarters, Iraq’s accommodating tone and willingness to open the sensitive sites rekindled a push to weaken--or head off completely--the tough new Security Council resolution sought by the U.S. and Britain. Fundamental differences over the issue have so far prevented any formal presentation of the draft measure to the council, and events in Vienna appeared likely to accentuate those differences.

Russia, which U.S. officials had earlier indicated was becoming more receptive to the tougher U.S. approach toward Iraq, said the Vienna meeting’s outcome precluded the need for any new Security Council action.

“We think the agreement with Iraq is a good opportunity to let the inspectors return,” said Sergei Treplekov, a Russian U.N. delegation spokesman. “For the present, we don’t see the need for a new resolution.”

Moscow is worried that war with Iraq would jeopardize its considerable economic interests in the Persian Gulf nation as well as its political influence in the region.

Yahya Mahmassani, the Arab League’s ambassador to the U.N., also applauded the meeting as a “good step forward.”

“It shows the Iraqis are cooperating and things are going well,” he said.

Meanwhile, there were reports that France was preparing an alternative, two-stage plan for consideration. The French draft reportedly contained much of the tough language already crafted by Britain and the U.S., but called for passage of a second resolution to approve the use of force if Iraq fails to meet the conditions.

In Britain, Blair spent part of his day attempting to calm growing public unease over what is seen as a rush toward war. Addressing delegates at his Labor Party’s annual conference in the northern city of Blackpool, he called upon “the bold side of the British character” to stick to demands that Iraq disarm.

“Sometimes, and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war,” he said. “If at this moment, having found the collective will to recognize the danger, we lose our collective will to deal with it, then we will destroy not the authority of America or Britain but of the United Nations itself.”

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Rubin reported from Vienna and Marshall from the United Nations. Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations, Sonni Efron in Washington and special correspondent William Wallace in London contributed to this report.