Blix is back! This could be the title either of a diplomatic comedy, in the genre of “The Pink Panther Strikes Back”, or of a spy thriller worthy of Ian Fleming.
The character in question is, of course, Hans Blix, the 74-year-old Swedish diplomat who heads the United Nations’ team of weapons’ inspectors in Iraq. His show consists of the central ring in a three-ring circus that will decide whether or not there will be another war in Iraq soon.
The first ring consists of the power struggle that continues within the Bush administration in Washington. On the one hand, there are those who are still committed to regime change, and nothing less, in Iraq. On the other, there are advocates of a re-branded version of the “containment” policy under which Saddam Hussein will be kept in “his cage”, presumably with Hans Blix keeping watch, until Fate decrees something better for the Iraqi people.
The second ring plays out in the UN Security Council in New York where a trio of French, Russian and Chinese “veto” holders is fighting tooth and nail to keep Saddam Hussein in power for as long as possible. Their slogan is “a change in the regime, not a change of regime.”
Blix’s show in Baghdad will be central because what happens there will determine the outcome of the struggles in Washington and New York. In the past few days Blix has gone out of his way to minimize his role. He insists that the decision on war remains firmly in the hands of the Security Council.
This, although technically true, does not tell the whole story.
A Blix report that says Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction would make it impossible for the Americans to take military action against Saddam. On the other hand, no amount of French and Russian chicanery could save Saddam if Blix reports that Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction and is hiding them.
It is, therefore, the Blix show that is worth watching in the next few weeks. Although it is too early to tell how the show will proceed, there already are some indications that we may witness the shaping of the mother of all diplomatic fudges.
Let’s start with the Security Council’s decision to accept the Iraqi response to Resolution 1441 without closer scrutiny. The fact is that Iraq’s nine-page letter delivered on Nov. 13 does not contain an explicit and unconditional acceptance of Resolution 1441 as demanded by the Security Council. The letter simply says that Iraq shall “deal with Resolution 1441”. The Arabic text is even more ambiguous and could be interpreted to say that Iraq shall “confront” the resolution. The phrase “accepting unconditionally” came from Iraq’s UN’ envoy Muhammad Al-Duri whose weight within the Iraqi system is no more than that of a messenger boy.
When the Iraqi “Parliament” unanimously rejected 1441, President George W. Bush dismissed the event as unimportant. He said he would wait for Saddam Hussein to take a position. Well, the fact is that Saddam has not taken a position. His propaganda is, in fact, telling the Iraqi people that he has just won another great diplomatic victory by trapping “the American and Zionist enemy” into a diplomatic process beyond their control. The Iraqi letter is not even signed by the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest authority in Baghdad after Saddam Hussein. At most it commits Foreign Minister Naji Al-Sabri, a non-political diplomat who could be dropped at any moment.
Of even greater concern are some of Blix’s latest pronouncements. The usually taciturn Swede has gone out of his way to unleash an avalanche of interviews and confidences that could bury his mission.
Blix says three things that are significant.
First, he says that he does not start his mission from the premise that Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction. “We have an open mind,” he says. “We cannot say that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. And we cannot say that it does not.” This, as any reader of detective stories would know, is a most curious police method. If you do not have a hypothesis upon which to work you are unlikely to find anything.
Secondly, Blix says that his team will operate “in accordance with the established procedures”. And that means the accords signed by the UN’ Kofi Annan with one of Saddam’s aides, Tariq Aziz, in 1998. The accords created what is known in diplomatic circles as “black tie” or “white gloves” inspection. Blix’s reference to “established procedures” is dangerous because it weakens 1441 that was presented as a document superseding all previous resolutions and memoranda.
Even more interesting is Blix’s third assertion. This concerns the right of the United States, or indeed of any other UN member, to provide evidence that Saddam Hussein is taking the inspectors up the garden path. Blix says such evidence could, of course, be presented to the council. But, he insists, it is up to his team to verify the evidence and report back.
Blix’s recent statements contain many other interesting points that indicate his, perhaps unconscious, conviction that his mission is not there to discover Saddam’s hidden arsenal but to produce a diplomatic fig leaf that could render war impossible.
This may well be an honorable personal choice. But it could render the entire mission meaningless.
Resolution 1441 has been described as “tough” and “aggressive”. But this is a textual illusion. The resolution provides the authority for “tough and aggressive inspection”. But what if Blix does not make use of that authority?
He says that his inspection shall be “effective” but certainly neither robust nor aggressive. He has already served notice that he would not use part of that authority with regard to interviewing Iraqi weapons’ scientists outside Iraq. “The council has given me the authority,” he says. “But I am not obliged to use it. I think it is wiser to interview the Iraqis inside Iraq and in the presence of a representative of the Iraqi government.”
Even more interesting is Blix’s attempt at fudging the concept of “material breach”. In an interview on Nov. 15 he said that it was not up to him to decide what was and what was not a material breach of the terms of the resolution. That, he said, had to be decided by the Security Council on the basis of UN definitions that have been in force since the 1950s. In other words, the whole thing becomes a matter of opinion, not of fact.
Blix says his team will focus on 700 sites throughout Iraq. These are sites that were inspected between 1992 and 1998. Could he not imagine that the Iraqis might have developed other sites? Wouldn’t it be more prudent to assume that the whole of Iraq could be a weapons’ site? In 1995, Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, defected and told the world of sites that the UN inspectors did not know existed.
Blix’s psychology could best be understood from his assertion that if only one tire of his car is punctured that would be an accident while if all the four tires were flat he would suspect a deliberate act of ill-will on the part of the Iraqis. What he has not considered is the way Saddam works. Saddam will give him one flat tire at a time. Enough to keep the Swede busy changing tires but not enough to have him pick the phone to the Security Council to claim “a material breach”.
Will Saddam outfox the gullible “crusaders” once again? He certainly thinks that he can. We have at least another 120 days to find out.
