The Washington Post has got it back to a "Two Factions in the Administration" argument on the UN Resolutions. I don't think it matters too much. Saddam will not comply no matter what, IMO.
U.N. Pressed for Tough Stance on Iraq
U.S. Seeks Backing for Military Action if Hussein Defies Inspections Agreement
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 14, 2002; Page A25
Having secured congressional authorization for an invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has shifted focus to the United Nations, where it hopes the Security Council will soon approve a tough new weapons inspection program and backing for military action if Saddam Hussein does not comply.
Discussions in New York are far more complicated than last week's brief skirmish with a largely pliant Congress; a majority of the council, including three of the five permanent members with veto power, has already rejected key U.S. demands.
Success is still within reach, according to a wide range of U.S. and foreign officials. But whether the next foreign force to reach Iraq is a U.N. weapons inspection team or a U.S. military invasion, officials said, may depend as much on the administration's willingness to compromise with its council colleagues as it does on Hussein's acquiescence.
The question of what, if anything, the United States is willing to give up in the toughly worded U.N. resolution it has proposed has already divided the administration along familiar multilateral-unilateral fault lines and caused confusion among allies about what exactly is U.S. policy.
The answer is likely to require President Bush to take a far more definitive and public side in that internal debate than he has been willing to take.
Among the most contentious items in a draft U.S. resolution are provisions allowing representatives from any of the council's five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- to accompany U.N. inspectors on any mission inside Iraq, and pre-authorizing members to deploy "all necessary means," including military force, if they decide Iraq is not cooperating.
Both sides of the administration believe they have Bush's backing. Sources close to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is leading the U.N. effort, said he has been assured the president fully supports his willingness to give up parts of the resolution -- including member participation in inspections and the automatic use-of-force authorization -- as long as its bedrock demand that Iraq fully cooperate with anytime, anyplace inspections and a U.N. commitment to impose "consequences" for non-cooperation is satisfied.
Powell would not have called his French counterpart, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, on Thursday offering to remove the "all necessary means" wording, without Bush's approval, the sources said. France, which along with Russia and China believes consideration of consequences for Iraqi failure should wait until Baghdad is given a chance to cooperate, responded that the wording was still too "ambiguous."
But among senior Pentagon civilians led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon -- where planning for war against Iraq is well underway -- and in the office of Vice President Cheney -- who played a lead role in drafting the resolution -- there is equally strong conviction that Bush will not permit any substantive change in the proposed wording. This is as much for military reasons as political: As the armed forces steadily build up in the region, Pentagon officials are worried that preparedness could erode if they are not used quickly.
If there is any compromising, this side has made clear, it will be by French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladmir Putin, not Bush.
"The ability to have our own people on inspections teams, and not just a bunch of U.N. bureaucrats," is not open to discussion, said a senior administration official closely involved in Iraq planning.
Disdain for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is high in the Pentagon. Senior officials routinely dismiss UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix, who has objected to this and several other provisions in the resolution, as living in a fantasyland where a few dozen inspectors can counter Iraq's efforts to hide chemical and biological weaponry.
Blix's concern, which was echoed in an interview with Rolf Ekeus, the first head of the U.N. inspection team in Iraq, is that if the United States and other permanent council members put their own people on inspection teams, the U.N. team leader would lose control of the operation. "Suppose the U.S. member wants to go behind one door in a building and the French member doesn't, what happens?" Ekeus said in a recent interview. "That plan is unworkable."
"It is fair to say that one reason why we're insisting so hard that they not water [the resolution] down is that UNMOVIC cannot go through the hide-and-seek game that UNSCOM went through," a senior Defense official said in a reference to the first Iraq weapons inspection organization, the U.N. Special Commission. That group gave up in 1998 after more than six years of battling Iraqi concealment and Hussein's final refusal to allow it to continue.
Some of this disdain is also transferred to Powell, whose U.N. efforts are seen by some advocates of U.S. military action as a placeholder while the Pentagon gets its forces up to invasion strength. Their views are returned in kind by some in the State Department, who suggest refusal to compromise on "expendable" parts of the resolution is motivated by a desire to see the United Nations and inspections fail so an invasion can get underway.
As the Security Council debate begins in earnest this week, a number of U.S. friends and allies professed confusion and concern about a U.S. policy dispute they thought was settled by Bush's decision in August to take his case against Iraq to the United Nations.
Since Bush's U.N. speech Sept. 12, said a diplomat from one council member, the administration has had two Iraq policies: "one for New York and one for Washington." He said even his government, a close U.S. ally, is unsure which one is Bush's.
Others say they wonder if Bush was ever serious about the United Nations. "We all want Washington to stay on the U.N. line, and having gotten us all fired up, not walk away," said another council diplomat. "Everybody knows we have to take up our responsibilities and make sure the Iraqis disarm," he said. "We're prepared to do so. [But] there is no point putting forward unrealistic proposals that don't mesh with the U.N. system and what other members want."
Until August, those advocating a unilateral U.S. attack appeared ascendant as the war in Afghanistan wound down but support for the ongoing anti-terrorist campaign remained high. Bush had promised during the presidential campaign that he would "fully implement" a largely dormant Clinton-era policy of "regime change" to oust Hussein.
His "axis of evil" speech in January appeared to cement administration intentions, as Bush said the greatest threat to U.S. security was the possibility that Hussein's rogue regime would turn its weapons of mass destruction over to anti-American international terrorists.
The next six months were marked by escalating administration rhetoric on Iraq's terrorist connections and references to Hussein's weapons buildup in the face of an ineffectual United Nations.
But at the same time, criticism of what was seen as U.S. aggression and unilateralism was rising around the world. Most U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East -- whose assistance would be important for a successful attack on Iraq -- felt an unprovoked, preemptive U.S. action would violate international law and set the region ablaze with protest.
There is a long line of those willing to take credit for Bush's decision in August to go to the United Nations for support for a tough posture against Iraq. British officials believe that Prime Minister Tony Blair, the only major world leader to support military action against Hussein, nudged the president toward international consultations.
Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III, still-influential former advisers to Bush's father, went public that month with reservations about the go-it-alone approach. Their advice coincided with that being offered by CIA Director George J. Tenet.
But a senior administration official credited Cheney, who held a videoconference with the vacationing Bush in early August, with suggesting that a Bush speech to the U.N. General Assembly scheduled for mid-September be changed from vague promotion of Mideast democracy to a focus on U.N. failure to hold Hussein accountable for defying a decade of Security Council demands. Cheney, according to this account, suggested that by outlining the growing Iraqi threat and giving the United Nations one last chance to deal with it, Bush would leave his options open for a unilateral attack.
State Department officials tell a different story, noting that Powell had been regularly relaying to Bush private admonishments from world leaders that were even stronger than what they were saying in public. These sources say Bush's decision came after an hour-long one-on-one with Powell at the presidential ranch in late August in which the secretary of state urged the United States try a more internationalist approach.
Although Powell and his aides have stressed that the United Nations. must be prepared to take multinational military action if Iraq defies new inspection rules, their negotiating emphasis has been on the importance of the multinational inspections effort and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. There has been unspoken acknowledgment that, in the unlikely event that Hussein cooperates fully, he will be allowed to stay in power.
Away from the United Nations, in news conferences, speeches and testimony designed to promote public and congressional support, Rumsfeld and others have stressed Iraqi links with al Qaeda and the potential for attacks on the United States that would be far worse than Sept. 11. Even if the Security Council agreed to a tough resolution, and even if Iraq cooperated, several officials have said that is only one step toward Hussein's ouster.
In the unlikely event that Hussein complied with U.N. resolutions, Zalmay Khalilzad, who handles Iraq on the White House National Security Council staff, told a group of Middle East specialists here this month, force might not be required in the "near term." But "we would still pursue regime change and liberation."
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