[Nasional-e] Years have been lost, and it isn't all Saddam's fault

[Ambon]

 Years have been lost, and it isn't all Saddam's fault
  Barbara Crossette International Herald Tribune Tuesday, October 1, 2002

The undoing of arms inspections in Iraq

NEW YORK A strange bipartisan amnesia has overtaken Washington, obscuring
the story of how United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq lost their punch
and effectiveness.
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In the critical late 1990s, it was the United States, the preeminent power
on the Security Council, that effectively stopped supporting the inspection
system, rendering it a sham. Democrats understandably do not want to
remember that. Republicans would find it inconvenient to have to share the
blame with an amorphous "UN" that the Bush administration pretends not to be
part of as it rattles sabers against the organization almost as frequently
as it threatens Iraq. After the early, vigorous efforts of Madeleine
Albright as ambassador to the United Nations to hold Iraq to its disarmament
obligations during the first four-year Clinton administration, the steam
went out of U.S. policy after 1996, when Albright moved to Washington as
secretary of state and the Clinton White House seemed indifferent to how the
issue was handled in New York. Just then, Saddam Hussein was beginning to
demonstrate that he no longer intended to play the cat-and-mouse game and
would undercut the experts who had found and destroyed more Iraqi weapons
than had been eliminated during the Gulf War. At the United Nations,
Washington was on "cruise control" by 1997. Crippling sanctions could stay
in place forever as far as Washington was concerned. Saddam was "in his
box." Others on the Security Council did not see this as a policy, given
that the Iraqis were finding novel ways of circumventing the embargo, and
especially the ban on oil sales, while propagandizing the deprivations
suffered by the Iraqi population, for which Washington was blamed.
.
The only nod to change came with U.S, backing for the "oil for food" program
that allowed UN-controlled petroleum sales to pay for civilian goods. That
program got off the ground late in 1997 and has been liberalized several
times since, bringing Iraq tens of billions of dollars in revenue. A more
thorough review of U.S. policy on Iraq was called for in the mid-1990s but
never materialized. Meanwhile, Russia, France and, intermittently, China
became increasingly willing to listen to Iraq's perennial lament that
unending, intrusive inspections were no longer necessary since weapons of
mass destruction were long gone - a claim that no one with any knowledge of
Saddam's government believed - and that steps toward the lifting of
sanctions could begin. By 1997, the year Richard Butler, a blunt Australian
disarmament expert, took over as executive chairman of the inspection
system - the United Nations Special Commission, or Unscom - the Security
Council's disarmament program in Iraq was in deep trouble. That year, the
Iraqis blocked inspection after inspection and tried to bar Americans from
the teams on the ground in Iraq.
.
There was bluster in Washington. But the Clinton administration was heading
into the Monica Lewinsky scandal and had been embarrassed by reports that
Washington was using inspection teams to set up spy operations for American
intelligence. Early in 1998, the United States acquiesced in a disastrous
diplomatic mission by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Baghdad to sign an
agreement with Saddam to open disputed "presidential sites" to diplomats if
not inspectors.
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By this time Iraq had a laundry list of places inspectors could not go. Iraq
was backing out of even this flimsy agreement before the ink was dry.
.
Washington said almost nothing. Nor did it put muscle behind the embattled
chief inspector, Butler, as he was stiffed, insulted and humiliated by the
Iraqis. By the summer of 1998, effective inspections were essentially over,
and the talents of a first-rate team of international arms experts put on
hold. The United States and Britain bombed Baghdad in December 1998,
ostensibly because of Iraqi noncompliance. The last inspectors had been
withdrawn by Butler hours before the attack.
.
Until this year, again under the threat of attack, Iraq never considered
allowing them back. A new inspection commission was created late in 2000, in
part because of Iraqi complaints about Unscom. Many diplomats at the United
Nations saw the U.S. bombing in 1998 as an easy alternative to tough
diplomacy or a more creative policy to deal with the recalcitrant and crafty
dictator in Baghdad. The U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations was left
vacant for months on end. When Richard Holbrooke arrived at the United
Nations in 1999, he said he was too busy getting a deal to reduce American
dues to focus on Iraq. Later Holbrooke would acknowledge that U.S. policy
had reached a dead end.
.
Years were lost. Saddam Hussein is now richer and more belligerent. And
there is still no policy but war.
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The writer, UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001,
contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.