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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (78790)	3/1/2003 7:04:14 PM
From: Sig	Respond to of 281500

Arrest that woman, that,taht, that Helen She has violated the two question rule

To: Win Smith who wrote (78790)	3/2/2003 6:19:30 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

Compare and contrast time. Ari Fleischer, Jan. 6, from the previous message, official transcript available at whitehouse.gov MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war. From today's paper, To White House, Inspector Is Now More a Dead End Than a Guidepost nytimes.com Mr. Blix is said by diplomats to have said many times in private that he would like additional time for inspections. His colleague Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief inspector for the atomic energy agency, has said more explicitly and publicly that the inspectors should be given more time. But those suggestions have infuriated many in the Bush administration, who contend that it is the Security Council's role, not Mr. Blix's, to say whether he should be given more time. One American diplomat said it would have been better for Mr. Blix to arrive in Baghdad, set up shop and simply demand that Iraq present its weapons and to leave if they did not do so. When he last spoke to the Security Council on Feb. 14, Mr. Blix declared that Iraq had not complied fully with Security Council demands on disarmament and disclosure. But he also said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's earlier assertions of suspicious Iraqi behavior, like destroying evidence at certain inspections sites, could not be corroborated. Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Blix's spokesman, said he made that statement in response to requests from other Security Council members for him to address Mr. Powell's presentation. But an official familiar with Mr. Blix's thinking said the inspector resented the suggestion that his inspection team was somehow incompetent or infiltrated by Iraqi agents. In the past two weeks, there has been extensive discussion between the United States and Mr. Blix on the possibility of setting "benchmarks" or "tasks" for Iraq — in effect, final tests of Iraq's intentions. Mr. Blix is working now to bundle all those tasks into 29 "clusters" and to measure Iraq's progress in achieving the disarmament goals. Some administration officials said they hoped that effort might still highlight Iraq's many failures to disarm. Others said they wished the idea of "benchmarks" had never been introduced. "The benchmarks have become a diversion from the key issue of whether Saddam Hussein is meeting his obligations," said a State Department official. "It's the overall disarmament that we're concerned about — not just bits and pieces of it." The administration's difficulty with such benchmarks was illustrated by the back and forth over Iraq's banned missiles. At first, the United States cited the missiles as proof that Iraq would not disarm. Then on Thursday, after Iraq had signaled that it might comply with orders to destroy them, Mr. Powell said, "It doesn't change our view of the situation in the slightest." Elsewhere on the UN front in today's paper, from Blix's "partner in crime" in unspoken WH terminology: QUESTIONS FOR MOHAMED ELBARADEI To Charm and Disarm nytimes.com Q: As director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, you are a key figure in the inspection process in Iraq. Some in the Bush administration disparage the inspections-- A: Some of the comments that I've been hearing lately have been unhelpful. For example, ''Inspectors are just observers.'' That's a total misconception. I would like to remind those who are saying that of Ronald Reagan's motto: ''Trust but verify.'' Inspectors do a lot of investigative work. We are the ones who disarmed Iraq's nuclear weapons program in the 1990's -- despite a lack of full cooperation by Iraq. We are the ones who discovered that North Korea had been producing undeclared plutonium. . . . Q: You have worked with Hans Blix for many years. He's been the leading face of the Iraqi inspections. Do you feel competitive with him? A: No, I don't see it as competition. We obviously are different people with different views, but I think we complement each other quite well. We disagree strongly sometimes. Q: If, after a war, the U.S. finds evidence of a vast Iraqi nuclear program that your inspectors did not uncover, will you resign from I.A.E.A.? A: No, no, because from Day 1 we have been saying that we can give you assurances but we cannot give you absolute certainties. If you go to a doctor, the more tests you have, the greater the likelihood that you are healthy. But the doctor will not give you an absolute certificate. You could still have a heart attack or a growth somewhere that could not be detected. Q: Whom would you rather have coffee with, George Bush or Saddam Hussein? A: I really don't drink coffee.