Under U.S. Threats, Iraq, UN Mull Arms Inspections
Tue Jul 2, 4:56 AM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
VIENNA, July 2 (Reuters) - United Nations ( news - web sites) Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) wants a "decisive" outcome to his talks with Iraq this week, while Baghdad has dampened expectations of a "yes" or "no" answer on the return of U.N. arms inspectors.
Iraq, facing U.S. threats to overthrow President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites), has sent a delegation led by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri to meet Annan in Vienna on Thursday and Friday for the third round of talks this year.
The meeting is taking place in the Austrian capital rather than New York after Iraq complained of delays in getting U.S. visas.
The arms inspectors, key to suspending 12-year old U.N. sanctions against Baghdad, left on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign in December 1998 and have not been allow to return since to check on any remaining weapons of mass destruction programmes.
"We cannot keep talking forever, and I would hope that we will be able to yield some results," Annan said in New York. "I would want to see a decisive meeting."
But Iraqi officials are wondering out loud why they should admit the inspectors if the United States wants a "regime change" no matter what they do.
President Bush ( news - web sites) has warned Iraq it faces dangerous consequences if it does not allow the inspectors back, fearing Baghdad could pass on its know-how to terrorist groups. At the same time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has questioned whether the arms experts would be able to uncover hidden weapons even if they were allowed back in the country.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, who is attending the Vienna talks, said in a recent interview that Baghdad was ready to accept the return of the inspectors "in principle," albeit with conditions.
Aldouri said Baghdad needed answers to the U.S. threats, the route toward lifting sanctions and an end to the no-flight zones the United States and Britain have imposed on northern and southern Iraq.
NO SPIES
Iraq also wants assurances no "spies" will be in any inspection teams and that Israel gets rid of its nuclear arms, he said. "We have received some answers to some but not for the most important questions," Aldouri told Reuters.
The 15-member U.N. Security Council has not authorized Annan to reply to politically loaded questions, presented by Iraq at the last talks in early May.
Despite differences in the council, key members are working to suppress them and are insisting first on a return of the arms experts, who went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites) and spent seven years checking into nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic arms programmes.
Russia, for one, has downplayed its insistence that the United States engage in refining a 1999 council resolution on how the sanctions, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, should be suspended after the arms inspectors report their findings. Most of Moscow's current proposals would be rejected out of hand by Washington.
While some analysts say Baghdad has no incentive to allow the inspectors to return, others say their presence on the ground could stave off a U.S. attack.
"It could be their best national defense policy," said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. inspection unit.
Included in the U.N. delegation at the talks this week will be chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who attended previous meetings and answered detailed questions on the shape of any future inspections. Also attending will be Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell and Yuli Vorontsov, the special U.N envoy in charge of issues relating to Kuwait.
At the May talks, Iraq offered to return Kuwait's national archives, looted when its troops occupied the emirate in 1990. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said a "mechanism" for doing so was expected to be agreed on during the Vienna talks.
(The way this reads it sounds like the U.N. wants to curtail all U.S. Inspections of Iraq.)(JMHO)
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