Negotiations, Pentagon Style
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Negotiations, Pentagon Style As inspectors head back to Iraq, the military buildup continues apace. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES ON NOVEMBER 8, just minutes after the United Nations Security Council voted...
...Probably take some kind of analysis, by the lawyers of the resolution...
...There is a decade of history to justify such fears...
...UNMOVIC, national security officials say, is an emasculated version of UNSCOM and is led by an Inspector Clouseau-like figure in Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA...
...These same officials worry that with the "zero-tolerance" policy articulated by President Bush, the inspectors will be willing to overlook some Iraqi noncompliance in order to avoid war...
...Remember, after UNSCOM was disbanded, France, Russia, and China opposed reconstituting any inspection regime, and favored simply lifting the sanctions on Iraq...
...While allowing that Iraqi attempts to shoot down U.S...
...inspectors and arms experts disagree about how to disarm Iraq, virtually all of them say that crucial to the effectiveness of any inspection regime is the power to interview Iraqi government scientists outside Iraq, with guaranteed protection for their families, including the offer of asylum...
...I don't know if I can precisely answer that question...
...Not much wiggle room there...
...pilots patrolling the no-fly zone—Boucher gave voice to what might be called the "some-tolerance" policy...
...What is clear, and what should not be surprising, is that the Bush administration is proceeding on the Iraqi question on two different tracks: diplomatic and military...
...Any Iraqi noncompliance is serious, because such bad faith will show that Iraq has no intention of disarming...
...One concern of senior Pentagon officials and others in the national security hierarchy is the composition of the inspection team...
...Colin Powell last weekend raised the prospect of going to the U.N...
...One reason for their skepticism: While former U.N...
...Just to create UNMOVIC—the current, relatively powerless inspection operation—took a year...
...Said Powell, "Clearly if the Security Council acts, it acts with the force of international law...
...military preparing for war, the meaning of that phrase—"severest conse-quences"—might seem self-evident...
...If Hans Blix and his inspectors are shuffling around the Iraqi desert a year from now, says one senior administration official, "that's a catastrophe...
...Any Iraqi noncompliance is serious...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES ON NOVEMBER 8, just minutes after the United Nations Security Council voted to approve the latest resolution on Saddam Hussein, President Bush clarified its meaning: "[Saddam] must submit to any and all methods to verify his compliance...
...Not at the State Department, where Colin Powell last week suggested his preference for a second U.N...
...But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher must have missed the president's remarks...
...With the passage of this resolution the world must not lapse into unproductive debates over whether specific instances of Iraqi noncompliance are serious...
...But Saddam is unpredictable, and Pentagon officials aren't taking any chances...
...And while Pentagon planning proceeds apace, anticipating battle in the optimal fighting months of December through March, the State Department is slowing everything down...
...Problem is, the Security Council is unlikely ever to endorse the use of force...
...Administration officials suggest such a declaration, if Saddam makes it at all, might resemble the "white paper" released by Britain earlier this fall describing much of what Western intelligence services know about Iraq's arsenal...
...Last Wednesday, as Bush elaborated a bit on his "zero-tolerance" policy, Boucher lapsed into an unproductive debate over Iraqi noncompli-ance...
...for a second resolution, authorizing the use of force...
...Even if Iraq stops shooting at American planes, we'll know more about Saddam's intentions by December 8, the deadline for Iraq to declare the status of its weapons of mass destruction program...
...Late last week, El-Baradei said inspectors would need to see "a pattern of lack of cooperation" before they would report to the Security Council...
...With some 60,000 troops already in the region and the entire U.S...
...But it also reveals a deep disagreement over whether the return of U.N...
...And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to arrive in Qatar on December 9, one day after Saddam's next deadline, to open Central Command's new forward headquarters...
...Last week, a key Kurdish leader told the Los Angeles Times that for the first time since 1996, there is military "cooperation" between his forces and the U.S...
...resolution authorizing force and where his spokesman, Richard Boucher, threatened the Iraqi dictator with battle-hardened . . . lawyers...
...But Blix has rejected this approach, dismissing it simply as "impractical...
...President Bush included this requirement in his address to the U.N...
...The president recognizes that [working with the U.N.] was a risk," says an administration official...
...But he is determined not to get sidetracked...
...The U.N...
...and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone...
...His cooperation must be prompt and unconditional or he will face the severest consequences...
...In part, this state of affairs reflects the traditional State/Pentagon split—the State Department seeks allies and the Defense Department kills bad guys...
...on September 12...
...planes would "indicate an intention not to cooperate with the United Nations," Boucher punted...
...The likelihood that Blix and the current head of the IAEA, Mohamed El-Baradei, will disregard what they consider minor instances of Iraqi noncompliance has long been a concern of those who argued against renewed inspections...
...Responding to a question about a particularly obvious form of noncom-pliance—the Iraqi army's longstanding habit of trying to kill U.S...
...In 1998, of course, Iraqi noncompliance was the reason inspectors were kicked out of Iraq, with little substantive protest from Annan...
...That formulation invites this question: If the United States acts, does it necessarily act outside international law...
...White House spokesman Scott McClellan cleared up the issue by telling reporters—twice— that "Iraq must also stop firing on the U.S...
...The vigorous military buildup in the region continues...
...Common sense tells us that Iraq's top government scientists know more about its weapons of mass destruction than anyone alive...
...That much was clear from Bush's comments minutes after the resolution passed...
...And the inspectors' boss, U.N...
...to an end (the White House...
...Monitoring, verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is a body that was created (with significant input from Iraq) after Saddam barred the original inspection team, UNSCOM, from inspecting anything...
...secretary general Kofi Annan, has demonstrated that he is willing to do anything— including disband the inspection regime altogether—to avoid war...
...Any act of delay or defiance will be an additional breach of Iraq's international obligations and a clear signal that the Iraqi regime has once again abandoned the path of voluntary compliance," Bush said...
...inspectors is a distraction (the Pentagon), an end in itself (the State Department), or a means Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The answer is no, but Powell plainly prefers more Security Council involvement, not less...
...And it just might come true if the State Department has its way...
Vol. 8 • November 2002 • No. 11
