No More Last Chances
Tuesday, January 28, 2003; Page A20
THE VITAL POINT of the presentations by Iraq arms inspectors to the United
Nations Security Council yesterday came at the beginning. "The fundamental
aim of inspections in Iraq has always been to verify disarmament," said
chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. But Iraq, he said, "appears not to have
come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was
demanded of it." Mr. Blix went on to present, in a deliberately understated
way, a devastating catalogue of lies, omissions and obfuscations by Iraq in
the 21/2 months since the council passed Resolution 1441, which was meant to
give Saddam Hussein "a final opportunity" to give up weapons of mass
destruction. Mr. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of nuclear
inspections, made it clear that Iraq did not embrace that chance. Yet the
two men dodged the obvious question their reports raised: If Saddam Hussein
did not accept voluntary disarmament, what purpose could be served by the
continued inspections they both advocate?
Mr. Blix seems to hope that Saddam Hussein might change his mind. He offered
Baghdad suggestions about what genuine cooperation might look like: It could
declare banned weapons and destroy them under U.N. supervision, turn over
documents it has hidden, allow unmonitored interviews with scientists it has
effectively silenced -- or at least disclose the thousands of scientists'
names it has withheld. This indeed would give his inspectors something to
do. But there is no indication that Iraq is contemplating such an
about-face: On the contrary, Mr. Blix made clear that Iraq's response to a
list of questions and demands he delivered in a showdown meeting in Baghdad
last week was another stonewall.
Mr. ElBaradei also invited a dramatic reversal, teasing Iraq with the
possibility that if it fully cooperated with his team, he could declare it
clean of nuclear weapons programs within a few months. But Mr. ElBaradei's
real plea for additional inspections was a familiar one: Even if Iraq is not
cooperating, he said, inspectors might be able to uncover its weapons
programs through "investigative inspections"; meanwhile, the mere "presence
of international inspectors in Iraq today continues to serve as an effective
deterrent." This strategy was tried during the 1990s, but it decisively
failed; consequently, it was explicitly rejected by the council during the
drafting of 1441. Mr. ElBaradei, like Mr. Blix, is trying to use his
technical position to recast the Security Council's decisions.
Rather than yield to the inspectors and offer Iraq yet another last chance,
the council would do better to simply obey the resolution it approved
unanimously just 11 weeks ago. The terms of 1441 said that if Iraq submitted
a false declaration of its weapons -- as all agree it did on Dec. 8 -- and
failed "at any time" to "cooperate fully" -- Mr. Blix detailed a number of
instances -- Baghdad would be in "material breach" of the resolution and the
council would be bound to meet to consider consequences. Only if the council
sticks to its own decisions will there be any chance that Saddam Hussein
will change his.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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