U.S. Fought Surprise Iraqi Arms Inspections
Visits Canceled After Albright Argued Timing Wrong for
Confrontation
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 14, 1998; Page A01
The Clinton administration has intervened secretly for months, most
recently last Friday, to dissuade United Nations weapons teams from
mounting surprise inspections in Iraq because it wished to avoid a new
crisis with the Baghdad government, according to knowledgeable
American and diplomatic accounts.
The American interventions included an Aug. 4 telephone call between
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Richard Butler, executive
chairman of the U.N. Special Commission responsible for Iraq's
disarmament, who spoke on a secure line from the U.S. Embassy in
Bahrain. As a team of specialists stood poised in Baghdad, according to
persons acquainted with the call, Albright urged Butler to rescind closely
held orders for the team to mount "challenge inspections" at two sites
where intelligence leads suggested they could uncover forbidden weapons
components and documents describing Iraqi efforts to conceal them.
After a second high-level caution from Washington last Friday, Butler
canceled the special inspection and ordered his team to leave Baghdad.
The disclosure was made yesterday by officials who regarded the
abandoned leads as the most promising in years and objected to what they
described as the American role in squelching them.
U.S. efforts to forge a go-slow policy in Iraq have coincided with the
announcement by the Baghdad government that it would halt nearly all
cooperation with the U.N. commission, known as UNSCOM, and the
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Administration. The two panels
are responsible for ridding Iraq of ballistic missiles and biological, chemical
and nuclear weapons.
The behind-the-scenes campaign of caution is at odds with the Clinton
administration's public position as the strongest proponent of unconditional
access for the inspectors to any site in Iraq. Led by the United States, and
backed by American threats of war, the U.N. Security Council has
demanded repeatedly since 1991 -- most recently in Resolution 1154 on
March 2 -- that Iraq give "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted"
cooperation to the inspection teams. That last resolution, at U.S. insistence,
promised "the severest consequences for Iraq" for further defiance and
was voted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which is legal
grounds for use of military force.
Last week, as Albright reportedly sought to rein in Butler, the
administration was retreating from the vows it made six months ago to
strike immediately and with significant military force if Iraq failed to honor a
Feb. 23 agreement that resolved the last such crisis over inspections. At
that time, administration spokesmen described a "snap back" policy of
automatic military retaliation if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein violated his
agreement with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Now the administration argues, as White House spokesman P.J. Crowley
said yesterday, that Iraq is proposing "a cat-and-mouse game" and "we're
not going to play." He said the United States would continue its
"encouragement" of Iraq's compliance with its obligations and would not
allow economic sanctions to be lifted until it does so.
Albright, in a one-sentence statement issued through a spokesman, said
last night: "U.S. policy has been to fully support UNSCOM in its
inspections and I have never told Ambassador Butler how to do his job."
She and those speaking for her declined to answer further questions about
her Aug. 4 "private discussions" with Butler and would not address
specifically whether she had advised him to cancel the planned raids.
Butler, reached by telephone yesterday, said any suggestion that he
received orders from Albright would be "a very considerable distortion of
what took place." He added, "No member of the [Security] Council,
including the United States, has purported to give me instructions. They all
recognize that their job is policy, my job is operations."
Asked whether Albright urged him or advised him not to go forward,
Butler said any answer "would be a very slippery slope" in which "I'd have
to tell you what the Russian ambassador said, what the French
ambassador said. Forgive me, but I won't get into that." Asked to confirm
he spoke to Albright last week, he said, "I'm becoming concerned now
about this line of inquiry."
Beginning in June, according to knowledgeable officials, the U.N.
inspectors developed secret plans -- withheld from most members of their
own staff -- for surprise raids at two sites where they believed they would
find evidence of forbidden chemical and biological weapons and the
ballistic missiles capable of deploying them. The officials declined to
describe the sites further, noting that they are still in operation.
In a little-known practice that all parties are loathe to acknowledge, Butler
dispatched senior lieutenants to London and Washington in late June to
provide highly classified briefings on the intended inspection "targets," the
sources said. Formally, Butler reports equally to all members of the
Security Council and does not give them advance operational plans. But
one official said he understands "it's suicide to go forward with an
inspection like this" without informing his principal sponsors, the United
States and Britain.
The two governments, according to knowledgeable officials,
acknowledged to Butler's deputies that UNSCOM had the right to make
its own decisions. But they worked in concert in the weeks that followed
to dissuade Butler from going forward with the inspection plan.
After consultations in Washington, Derek Plumbly, director of the British
Foreign Office's Middle East Command, flew to New York for a July 15
meeting with Butler. He told the Australian diplomat in no uncertain terms
that the time was not ripe for a provocative challenge to Iraq, in part
because Baghdad was still cooperating, ostensibly, on a "schedule of
work" intended to resolve open questions, the sources said.
Shortly after that meeting, U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, the
second-ranking delegate to the United Nations, called in Butler for a
consultation in which he raised a long list of U.S. questions and concerns
about the planned raids. Reading from prepared guidance, he told Butler
the decision was UNSCOM's but left the inspection chief with the plain
understanding that the United States did not support his plan, according to
a knowledgeable account of the meeting.
Butler canceled the raids in July but laid contingency plans to reschedule
them this month after meetings on Aug. 3 and 4 in Baghdad with Deputy
Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Aziz announced late on the first day that Iraq
would answer no further questions about its forbidden weapons, asserting
that all the answers had long since been made.
Butler had brought a senior inspection team led by Scott Ritter, who heads
UNSCOM's efforts to penetrate Iraqi counterintelligence efforts against
the inspectors. Included on Ritter's team, officials said, were language and
computer experts, experts on import and export records, and scientists
knowledgeable about missiles, chemical and biological weapons.
On Aug. 4, Butler notified the U.S. government that he had authorized
Ritter's team to conduct the raids on Aug. 6. That same day, he got word
that Albright wished to speak with him and traveled to the U.S. Embassy in
Bahrain for a secure discussion. Albright argued, according to
knowledgeable accounts, that it would be a big mistake to proceed
because the political stage had not been set in the Security Council.
Butler agreed to a three-day delay, to Aug. 9, in hopes that he could build
broader support for UNSCOM during informal consultations with the
Security Council. But after he briefed the council governments in New
York, he got another high-level American call on Friday urging him to have
the Ritter team stand down. The same day, he ordered them home.
In a letter to the council Wednesday, Butler said Iraq's new restrictions
"bring to a halt all of the disarmament activities" of his inspectors. On
Tuesday, Mohamed Baradei, director general of the IAEA, sent a similar
letter to the council saying he could no longer give confident assurance that
Iraq is not attempting to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
Both men are awaiting further instruction from the Security Council, which
is scheduled to take up the matter Tuesday. Yesterday in Baghdad, U.N.
special envoy Prakash Shah said he conveyed a message from Annan that
"Iraq should continue its cooperation" with the weapons inspectors. He
announced no results from what he described as a "cordial" meeting.
c Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
>>>Harkens back to State Dept foul-ups just before Gulf War.
>>>Every time they screw up, the military have to be called in. |
