Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2002, pages 20-21

United Nations Report

 

U.S. Go-It-Alone Stance, Fear of Iraqi Compliance Alienates Rest of World

 

By Ian Williams

For most of October, only a fan of Japanese Sumo wrestling could appreciate watching the Security Council at work: bloated but mighty combatants, seemingly immobile, straining and grappling for the strategic hold that will give significant leverage to throw the opponent out the ring in a visible spasm of movement.

In this case, the giants are remote-controlled. All the serious force is being applied in the capitals—most of it from Paris. Although not since 1976 has France actually applied a solo veto (to cover its neocolonial enterprises in the Comoros), it now is showing how well it has learned its lesson from Washington—that the veto you threaten is more useful than the one you use. British and American diplomats were convinced that once France accepted a compromise, so would Russia and China, the other potential vetoes.

France has had the agitator’s advantage: naked self-interest and a veneer of altruism and principle. Behind the scenes in Paris, the U.S. reputedly is making earnest promises that the French oil conglomerate Total-Elf-Aquitaine will be able to dip its pipeline into the Iraqi oil fields after the Baghdad regime has been changed, but these may need some solidification. France felt cheated when it came to dividing the spoils from Kuwaiti reconstruction contracts after Gulf War I. This time it wants better treatment, and is exploiting its nuisance value to get it.

That nuisance value is, of course, its entirely justifiable insistence that the resolution should not be a “Go To Baghdad For Free” card for the U.S. administration. The Francophonie—the meeting in Beirut of over 50 French-speaking countries—endorsed the French position, consolidating growing disquiet among many U.N. members, whose initial relief at President George W. Bush’s decision to go the U.N. route rapidly subsided when it became apparent that the last thing the administration wanted was for Iraq to admit the inspectors.

Indeed, Washington was visibly upset when UNMOVIC head Hans Blix returned from his Vienna talks with an Iraqi agreement to inspections. Under heavy pressure, Blix agreed to postpone sending the inspectors, stretching the bounds of strict legality, since it was clear in practical terms that it would be silly to change the rules once they were in Iraq. That only applies, however, while a new resolution and new terms of reference seem imminent. If the council is “paralyzed” for much longer, Blix will have no option but to send the inspectors in under the old mandate.

By then, the initial resolution had disappeared from sight. It was being dealt with in Washington, where Colin Powell used the acerbic comments of the rest of the world to dampen down some of the fiery sentiments of his hawkish colleagues.

 

Washington was visibly upset when Iraq agreed to inspections.

The original U.S. draft—clearly the product of late-night alchemy by the wicked wizards Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—was designed to make it impossible for Iraq to accept, and easy for the U.S. to punish Baghdad’s non-acceptance. It recalled the legal foundation for an attack by reciting the original resolutions authorizing the use of force by members, and by finding Iraq “in material breach” of the Gulf war cease-fire resolutions.

It would have mandated armed U.N. security forces to be deployed in key regional bases, including the capital, Baghdad, and the cities of Basra and Mosul, to “protect” the inspectors, and would have allowed the five permanent members of the Security Council the right to recommend sites to be inspected, individuals to be questioned, and request permission to have their representatives join the inspections. Of course, only two of the five were likely to exercise such rights, or provide forces.

The inspectors would have had the right to declare no-fly/no-drive zones, exclusion zones and/or ground and air transit corridors. Iraq would have to provide the Security Council, prior to inspections but within 30 days from the date of the resolution, a list of its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as all other chemical, biological and nuclear weapons production or material.” Iraq would have to provide a list of personnel involved in the programs, whom the U.N. would have the right to interview in or outside Iraq and, if outside, to bring their families.

The U.S. draft resolution then declared that any false statements or omissions in the list of programs or personnel submitted by Iraq, or its failure “at any time to comply and cooperate fully in accordance with the provisions laid out in this resolution, shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations, and that such breach authorizes member states to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area.”

Under pressure from UNMOVIC’s Blix, the draft lost the more provocative clauses about guards and Permanent Five officials accompanying the inspectors, which Blix felt would not enhance the inspections at all—and which, in any case, the Russians and French would never accept.

However, the declaration that Iraq already was “in material breach” of U.N. resolutions and the threat of severe consequences remained in the American draft, which most members felt would be taken by President Bush as an excuse for a unilateral attack on Iraq covered by a diminutive U.N.-blue fig leaf.

 

A Peasants’ Revolt

That disquiet led to a sort of peasants’ revolt. Even though the Americans and the British had not shared their draft with the other non-permanent Security Council members, let alone the rest of the world, the non-aligned in the General Assembly and the elected Security Council members got together to insist on an open debate in the Council at the end of October. Country after country rose, not to defend Iraq, which clearly has few friends in the world, but to question the abuse of international law that a unilateral attack on the country would constitute.

Powell and the British were promising that there would be another meeting of the Council between any Iraqi non-cooperation and any U.S. military action, but that was not convincing for skeptical Council members. Not unreasonably, they felt that if the meeting were intended to be in any way substantial, then there is no reason for U.S. insistence on avoiding a second resolution.

Nor did Powell reassure them when he said that “any resolution that emerges from this will be a resolution that preserves the authority and the right of the president of the United States to act in self-defense…in concert with the international community or with like-minded nations than through the U.N. should it not wish to act.” This implies, after all, that Washington’s position is that its intentions are covered by the initial post-Sept. 11 antiterrorism resolution. No one outside the American public and cabinet, however, is at all convinced that Baghdad has any connections whatsoever with al-Qaeda and the attacks on the U.S.

In the open debate, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov articulated the suspicions of most members. “If we’re talking not about the deployment of inspectors, but about an attempt to use the Security Council to create a legal basis for the use of force, or even for a regime change of a U.N. member state, and this goal has been constantly alluded to by several officials publicly, then we see no way how the Security Council could give its consent to that.”

Most Council members are indeed prepared to see the inspectors go in armed with a tougher mandate than the previous agreements, and even to let the Iraqis know that any backpeddling would cost them very dearly. It is a measure of U.S. isolationism in action that the administration does not seem to be listening to the rest of the world.

Elected members of the Security Council like Ireland and Mexico, both of which have a history of bordering strong neighbors, have made it plain that they think international law should prevent big powers from moving against other nations without the full consent of the international community. The Bush administration, however, acts as if a congressional resolution self-evidently trumps international law, and the decisions of every other government in the world.

This is a view shared by no one else. The British come the closest, saying in effect that since this is what the Americans believe, and they are going to go ahead anyway, then the rest of the world should pander to their bullying and somewhat deluded superpower. As we go to press, Washington had succeeded in alienating enough Security Council members to stop a resolution being adopted—even without a veto. The French alternative draft, however, only postponed Iraq’s day of reckoning.

One reason for American failure to secure support was its anomalous presumption that it can call fire and brimstone on Iraq’s head for breach of U.N. resolutions while showering cash on Israel for doing the same thing. As many suspected might happen, Ariel Sharon tried to come to Saddam Hussain’s rescue by proving that defiance of the U.N. Security Council and its resolutions was not unique to the Iraqi dictator. On Oct. 7, Secretary-General Kofi Annan strongly denounced the IDF’s attacks in Khan Younis that killed 14 Palestinians, saying, “Such actions have no legal or moral justification,” and appealing for implementation of Resolution 1435. That resolution calls for “expeditious withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities toward the return to the positions held prior to September 2000.”

Indeed, the Israelis had grudgingly announced their acceptance of the resolution the previous week, but, as so often, they were only kidding. The day after Annan’s statement Palestinian Ambassador Nasser El Kidwa went to the Arab group with a request for yet another Security Council meeting.

A disenchanted El Kidwa described the American attitude as “disgusting beyond belief.” The contrast between absolute inaction against Israel’s depredations and Bush’s expedient indignation at Iraqi defiance (or his frustrated indignation at Iraqi hints of compliance) would not stop the U.S., El Kidwa suggested, even if it provided a “tactical” weapon to slow the American juggernaut on its way to war.

Once again Saddam Hussain has probably left it all too late. In October, he accepted inspectors, released prisoners, and began the handover of stolen Kuwaiti archives. Had he unequivocally done all that in August, he may have succeeded in diverting Bush’s plans. It is almost too much to hope, however, that he will tell the truth about his weapons programs, or allow the inspectors free rein. And, even under the French scenario, military action will follow any serious prevarication.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.

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