Iraq Hunt To Extend To March, Blix Says
Arms Search Timetable Complicates U.S. Plans
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A01
washingtonpost.com
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that he is significantly expanding his inspection force in Iraq and plans to be working there at least until he presents a major report to the U.N. Security Council in March.
Blix said his next presentation to the Security Council, due on Jan. 27, would be an interim update on the results of the first 60 days of inspections and mark "the beginning of the inspection and monitoring process, not the end of it."
His remarks, in an interview, came after the Bush administration over the weekend described the end of this month as the start of "the final phase" leading to a decision on whether to use military force against Iraq. Yesterday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer avoided any talk of a deadline, however, saying that President Bush "has not put a timetable on it."
As the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf has accelerated, questions about when and how the administration will decide to use the vast military force it is assembling have become more pointed. To some extent, the administration is being deliberately ambiguous in an effort to pressure Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, to reveal hidden weapons programs by convincing him that the risk of invasion is real and immediate.
But the inspections timeline presented by Blix, along with near-daily policy calibrations by administration officials and public hesitation by potential allies, have begun to complicate the administration's hopes for a clear-cut scenario that would lead to Hussein's capitulation or a justifiable war by spring.
In his monthly news conference yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain was asked about seemingly conflicting statements he has made over the past several days. Blair, the Bush administration's leading ally on Iraq, said last week that inspectors should be given "space and time" to complete their work before any military decisions are made.
Blair strongly denied that his commitment to use force if necessary was wavering. He told reporters he was confident the United Nations would authorize military action once it was proven Iraq had lied about possessing weapons of mass destruction and was in "material breach" of November's Security Council resolution ordering new inspections. If the council could not agree, and "someone put an unreasonable or unilateral block down on action," Blair said, "we can't be in a position where we are confined." In that case, he indicated, Britain would join the United States in an attack.
A number of senior Security Council diplomats have said that, barring a major discovery by inspectors or aggressive action by Iraq, there was little hope that a majority would agree by the end of the month that Baghdad had violated the resolution. Senior administration officials have indicated the United States may try to bring the matter to a head by disclosing intelligence it says proves Hussein is hiding chemical and biological weapons and trying to build a nuclear weapon. Several informed U.S. and diplomatic sources said, however, that the evidence is largely circumstantial or dated and is unlikely to convince reluctant council members.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said yesterday that diplomacy should continue even if the United Nations decided to go to war. Saying that his government would propose a new Iraq initiative to Arab leaders at a meeting scheduled for March, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, pleaded in an NBC News interview: "At least give us a chance. What would be [lost] in that? If, in the final analysis, we don't succeed, those who are working for war can have their war as they please, but which is going to be a catastrophe for the region."
Blix said that the U.S. military buildup has added momentum to his inspections effort, but in a separate interview with the Reuters news service he said the escalation has also caused anxiety. "I represent disarmament through inspections," he said, "and we do our best to move on that line."
Blix said that 60 new inspectors, most of them Americans and Arabs, began training yesterday and would soon bring his total inspection team to nearly 200. "I'm upscaling as fast as I can" in response to Security Council directives, Blix said. "The Pentagon may not be impressed by my numbers [or] by what we're doing. . . . But there's a limit to how many inspections you can do in a day."
In addition to their headquarters in Baghdad, Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have opened a branch office in Mosul, in the northern part of Iraq, and will soon establish another office in the southern city of Basra, he said. The team also has added eight helicopters and is planning its own high-altitude surveillance throughout Iraq, using unmanned aircraft contributed by several countries.
Although they provide no guarantee of finding all the underground weapons sites or mobile laboratories Hussein is alleged to have, the presence of so many inspectors "fanning out around the country," Blix said, "will constitute a deterrent" to any dangerous Iraqi action. "It's a form of containment," he said.
Although November's Security Council Resolution 1441 instructed UNMOVIC and the IAEA to report on Iraqi cooperation 60 days after inspections began, the Jan. 27 report "is just an update," Blix said, adding that he does not expect the next two weeks of inspections, or his visit to Baghdad with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei next weekend, to yield any definitive answers.
The resolution does not mandate further reporting dates and, if the Security Council does not set a new one, Blix said he would be operating under an earlier council mandate, Resolution 1284, which created UNMOVIC in 1999 and which requires quarterly reports to the council.
The next report, he said, would be in March, when he would provide the council with a list of "key remaining disarmament tasks" for the inspectors and a future work program.
Bush administration officials have said they believe conclusive information about Iraq's weapons programs could be quickly gleaned from interviews with Iraqi scientists and technicians, if they were questioned outside of the country and given assurances of safety for themselves and their immediate families.
U.S. officials said they have turned over a specific outline of how such interviews could be conducted and what guarantees -- including U.S. asylum -- could be given the scientists.
Blix said inspectors would begin interviewing scientists this week and would seek private sessions. But he said there were still "imponderables" in attempting to take people out of the country. The U.N. inspectors, he said, could not force anyone to leave Iraq. |
