Follow the Resolution
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page B06
washingtonpost.com
HANS BLIX, the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, offered a revealing hint the other day of what the thrust of his first report to the U.N. Security Council will be tomorrow: Saddam Hussein's cooperation with the latest U.N. resolution ordering his disarmament, he said, has been "a mixed bag." That sounds to us like an awfully generous description of the facts, considering that Iraq, by Mr. Blix's own account, responded to Resolution 1441's requirement for a full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction with a blatantly false declaration; that it has refused to make its scientists available for unmonitored interviews; that it has blocked U-2 aerial overflights; and that despite all this, the inspectors have already found undeclared chemical warheads and illegally imported missile parts. Yet even if it is accurate, Mr. Blix's phrase points to the most serious emerging problem in the Security Council's handling of Iraq. Resolution 1441 offered Saddam Hussein "a last chance" to voluntarily disarm; it said that a false disclosure, coupled with "failure by Iraq at any time to comply . . . and cooperate fully" is a "material breach" that should trigger consideration by the council of "serious consequences," including military action. There is no tolerance in this formulation for "a mixed bag"; yet Mr. Blix probably will decline to report a material breach by Iraq, and both he and several members of the council will likely propose that instead of considering consequences, the council should simply allow the inspections to continue.
There is simply no way to square this proposed course with the terms of 1441, and the advocates of temporization, led by France and Germany, don't try very hard to do so. Instead, they set aside the text and offer a series of hypocritical rationalizations. It's true, they say privately, that Saddam Hussein hasn't complied with the resolution, but he might once he feels the pressure of the U.S. and British troops assembling around Iraq -- deployments Paris and Berlin publicly condemn as a "rush to war." Privately, officials acknowledge that Iraq does have hidden chemical and biological weapons; publicly, they insist that no action can be justified unless the inspectors manage to uncover them. At bottom, the argument is this: Saddam Hussein might be flouting a unanimously approved U.N. resolution, but as long as the inspectors are there, he is unlikely to use his weapons, and such containment is preferable to war, with all its risks and costs.
The French and Germans are right about war: It is always terrible, it can have unpredictable results, and democracies can embrace it only as a last resort. Yet their posturing, combined with the waffling of Mr. Blix, has made war more rather than less likely. Saddam Hussein can draw only one message from the current debate: that the Security Council no more has the will to force disarmament on him now than it did in the 1990s. Mr. Blix's report and the European reactions will encourage him to cooperate not more, but less. He might be contained for a while, but in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, another failure by the world's powers to enforce Iraqi disarmament would be a disaster even worse than war: It would touch off a rush by rogue states for nuclear weapons. Consequently, the absence of firmness by the council will only force the Bush administration to conclude that it has no choice other than to bypass the United Nations and lead a "coalition of the willing" into Iraq. That coalition likely would include half or more of the members of the NATO alliance; France and Germany, more than the United States, would risk isolation.
The rift towards which the Western allies now are headed, which only the world's despots and terrorists could welcome, can still be avoided. A solution could begin with a simple statement of the truth tomorrow by Mr. Blix, who ought to drop his mixed bag and simply report the indisputable fact that Iraq is in material breach of the terms of 1441. The council could then decide on actions, or at least set a deadline for action to be taken. If European governments wish to postpone a final decision on military intervention for a few weeks, the Bush administration should be ready to show patience; but if inspections are to be continued despite Iraqi noncompliance, the council ought to clearly define what their purpose is. In the end only a unified and determined stand by the council, backed by a readiness for war, has a chance of bringing about the necessary change in Iraq by peaceful means. If that fails, council members will have to decide whether to preserve the credibility of the United Nations -- or hand over the enforcement of global order to the United States. |
