BAGHDAD/LONDON, 21 January 2003 — Baghdad struck a 10-point deal yesterday with the United Nations accepting demands by arms inspectors for greater cooperation ahead of a report to the Security Council that could trigger a US-led war against Iraq. Chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei left Baghdad after issuing a 10-point joint declaration, winning a pledge that Baghdad would bolster cooperation with the disarmament process.
Plagued by threats of war from Washington and London, both of which are deploying huge numbers of forces to the Gulf, Baghdad accepted to grant access to all sites, including private homes, encourage Iraqi scientists to accept private interviews and appoint a team for a comprehensive search for warheads.
The document comes just seven days before Blix and El-Baradei submit their first status report to the Security Council since inspections resumed on Nov. 27 after a four-year break. Any negative report could be used by the United States as the threshold for deciding military action against Iraq, accused by the administration of US President George W. Bush of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Blix said after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Ministry officials the 10-point accord covers access to all sites, including private homes, encourages Iraqi scientists to accept private interviews and appoints a team to search for warheads. “We have gone a long way on that but there have been hitches on it and some of these hitches were solved today,” Blix told reporters.
Iraq’s will to boost cooperation was accompanied by a notable meeting late Sunday of Blix and El-Baradei with Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, the first since inspections resumed. Ramadan, usually known for his harsh criticism of inspections, pledged “the assertion of Iraq’s position for granting all aspects of support for the achievement of the mission of the inspectors.”
The UN disarmament heads also met twice with Foreign Minister Naji Sabri who vowed an equal “commitment by the Iraqi government to facilitate the work of the inspectors to help them assert that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.”
The United States and Britain have also hammered Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with warnings that “time is running out” for him to disarm if he wants to stay in power and avoid serious consequences, including military action. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iraq was exhausting the patience of the international community. “There has to come a moment when our patience runs out, and we are now near to that point with Iraq,” he said.
Although both the United Nations and Iraq spoke of progress in the two days of talks in Baghdad, the UN inspectors kept the Baghdad regime on its toes by saying that inspections had no time limit and that many major outstanding issues remained.
“There are outstanding issues which we were not able to solve, substantive issues related to anthrax, VX (nerve gas), Scud missiles. We did not discuss that yet,” Blix said before leaving. Jacques Baute, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Baghdad, told reporters that “we have made progress, but more on practical arrangements then on substance because during these two days we did not really discuss issues of substance.”
But, deep rifts among key members of the UN Council emerged yesterday over the process of Iraqi disarmament. The United States and Britain warned that time was running out for Baghdad to comply with disarmament demands while China said the inspectors needed more time to do their work and that the Jan. 27 report was not an end to the process but rather a new beginning.
Meanwhile, Germany said bluntly that it would not support any use of force to compel Iraq to disarm fearing “disastrous consequences” of war in comments later savaged by US Secretary of State Colin Powell who said the United Nations could not be scared into “impotence” in the face of Baghdad’s defiance.
“We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us,” Powell told the council, which was meeting in special session to discuss the global war on terrorism. (The Independent)
