The Trouble With Inspections

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Tips and defectors have produced much of what Washington knows about Iraq's arsenal. So, say impatient U.S. officials, the effective way to ferret out arms is to get more insiders like Izzadine al-Majid to squeal. That is why National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice traveled to New York City last week to press UNMOVIC's Blix to carry out Point 5, the section of the U.N. mandate authorizing unrestricted access to Iraq's scientists, who can be taken out of the country, with their families, for questioning. The Administration proposes offering asylum to such witnesses and their families if they disclose crucial information. Washington hard-liners like Richard Perle, an adviser to the Defense Department, call Point 5 "the only innovation" available to the inspectors and warns, "If they don't use it, they will fail."

A senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is overseeing the U.N. inspectors dedicated to nuclear weapons, says that team is working on the practical arrangements to conduct interviews outside Iraq. But the official counsels patience. "We have to identify key people, make sure they want to go, identify their families. It's no use just going to the physics department at the University of Baghdad."

U.N. officials are deeply uneasy about encouraging defections. Blix insists the U.N. cannot force Iraqis to take such dangerous steps. Iraq's extended-family structures don't lend themselves to defection because of the number of people this would involve, and those left behind would be in peril. Nevertheless, Rice spent most of an hour pushing Blix hard to agree to pursue Point 5 rigorously. "We will get the information," says a senior U.S. official, "[and] cross the bridge" later on how to make the interviews safer.

THE CLASH OF STRATEGIES. Inspections were barely under way last week when Bush pronounced them "not encouraging." Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a strong reminder that the U.S. was prepared to respond militarily to noncompliance. Day by day, Washington disparaged the process. After Iraq declares its arsenal, the White House and the Pentagon said, the regime must lead inspectors to the possible weapons sites and let them question everyone working there. Bush said disarmament, not inspections, was the goal and the burden was on Saddam to prove Iraq was defanged.

One purpose of the heated rhetoric was to convince Saddam that he is on the brink of war so he will have every incentive to meet inspection terms. At the same time, the U.S. hoped its tough tone would pre-empt any positive reaction to Iraq's appearance of cooperation, which might erode international readiness to take up arms against him. The White House is already worried the U.N. will accept a lower threshold of compliance than the U.S. The tough words also reflected the deep resistance lingering in some parts of the Administration to let inspections proceed at all. The hard-liners never supported the U.N. mission and regard inspections as an impediment to war. The moderates argue that an inspections effort working its way methodically to the irrefutable conclusion that Saddam has not disarmed is the only way the U.S. can muster allies for war.

Meanwhile, Saddam's game is to showcase Iraq's cooperation. Compared with the harassment inspectors encountered in the 1990s, Iraq last week set a pattern of spontaneous assistance, unlocking doors, handing over documents. Saddam let photographers shoot images of fruitless inspections that gradually took on a somewhat silly air and made Bush's hasty criticism look unfair. Iraq's President scored p.r. points in the Arab world for his willingness to endure humiliating intrusions even into his palaces. Although the U.N. teams studiously refused to disclose any findings, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, in contrast to Bush, that "Iraq's cooperation seems to be good."