The US has issued its strongest warning yet that it will use force unless Iraq complies fully with UN resolutions requiring it to submit to UN weapons inspectors who have to determine whether Iraq has eliminated all non-conventional weapons. This was part of the terms of the ceasefire which ended the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq should obey those terms. The trouble is that every time the work of the UN inspection team is interrupted, it gives Iraq the chance to move weapons or move the factories that produce them. It is far too easy to convert facilities from chemical factories that produce things like paint and fertilizer to factors that produce deadly chemical warfare products. The inspection effort has to be continuous.
Given the horror of chemical and biological warfare, it is important that the international community keep up the pressure on Iraq to submit to the inspections. The horror and danger of Iraq possessing these weapons was highlighted by the chief UN weapons inspector, Richard Butler, in an interview he gave to The New York Times in which he said that Iraq had enough biological weapons to “”blow away Tel Aviv, or wherever”.
That may have been a little intemperate and gave some succour to Iraq which accused Mr Butler of siding with the United States against Iraq when he was supposed to be neutral as an international employee. But Iraq did not deny Mr Butler’s assertions. And in making its accusations it referred to Israel as “”the Zionist enemy”, giving credence to Mr Butler’s view.
Mr Butler was mildly chastised by the UN Security Council for his statement. However unwise it may have been, it indicates his frustration at ensuring Iraq comply with the ceasefire settlement.
A diplomatic outcome is obviously preferable. At stake is the refusal by the Iraqi Government to permit the UN inspectors to inspect presidential palaces. The trouble with having any exemptions is that those will be the areas where the Iraqis can begin storage of critical parts of a biological or chemical warfare capability. The Iraqis have shown journalists through the palaces as a stunt to show they are not weapons factories. No-one is suggesting that the palaces themselves are making weapons, but they could be used to store critical components and crucial times. It takes experts with the power of random searching anywhere to uncover a determined effort to produce these weapons in secret. The palaces exemption could also have been a stunt to disrupt weapons inspections to buy time to move components and to engage in cover-ups.
Russia, France and Turkey have begun an intense diplomatic effort to diffuse the impasse. But words alone are unlikely to be effective in the face of Saddam Hussein. They have to be backed by credible threats of force if he does not comply.
The threat by US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, to use substantial force unless Iraqi backed down was a reasonable one in the circumstances, given the track record of Saddam. She has rightly said that the diplomatic effort still had several weeks to run. But in the face of the horror of these weapons and Saddam’s history of aggression the back-up threat of force is warranted.
That said, one can only hope that recent US bullishness is purely a response to the situation in Iraq and has in no way been prompted by any desire within the US administration to create a diversion from the problems surrounding the Lewisnsky allegations.
The US says that any strikes will be directed Iraq’s ability to develop weapons of mass destruction. However, they are unlikely to fully or solely achieve that objective. Innocent people are likely to suffer and Iraq will still be able to hide chemical-weapon components. But that has to be balanced against the many thousands or millions of lives threatened by Iraq’s weaponry which are in the hands of a single dictator answerable to no-one.
If Saddam wants to end sanctions, he knows what he must do.