Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2003, pages 12-13

United Nations Report

 

Washington’s Hawks Making Life at the U.N. More Difficult for Themselves

 

By Ian Williams

December was a trying time for President George W. Bush’s administration, especially for the vociferous wing of it that is in a continuous flap about its true, deep and sincere wish to wage war on Iraq. The depth of their desire repeatedly made them confuse their fantasies with reality. Their sincerity, in turn, led them to express their desires to the media—which, ironically, led to their frustration.

The rest of the world, if it is prepared to consider war at all, will do so only as a last resort, and the wails of bellicose despair from the Washington hawks every time Iraq met a U.N. deadline have irritated and worried other Security Council members—to the extent that it is now almost inconceivable that Washington could actually go to war without a second resolution, and equally inconceivable that it could get such a resolution unless it produces tangible evidence of Iraq’s “flagrant” violation of Resolution 1441. Colin Powell and the State Department, and other professional diplomats, had to bring up the rear, effecting compromises and smoothing ruffled feathers caused by Washington’s imperial insouciance to the views of others.

Disappointed as they were by Iraq’s acceptance of 1441’s ultimatum, the Washington hawks had pinned their hopes on the Dec. 8 deadline for delivery of Iraq’s full, frank and complete declaration of its programs for prohibited weapons of mass destruction. As the 12,000 pages dropped with a depleted uranium thump on their desks, the disappointed hawks realized that this casus belli was not going to fly. The UNMOVIC inspectors themselves had been hoping for a neat, computer-searchable CD-ROM, but the Iraqis went for hard copy, and made it even harder for Washington’s monolingual Anglophones by writing it in Arabic.

Because State Department Arabists have been a threatened species for many years now, the document briefly challenged Washington’s resources. On the Friday before it was due, the Security Council agreed that the UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors would get the copies first, in order to expurgate them. In providing a full and frank record of their industries that could have relevance to weapons programs, the Iraqis had perforce provided a useful guide for other states on how to develop the gruesome weapons.

No sooner had the American diplomats at the U.N. agreed to this, however, than Washington boiled over in anger. The U.S. delegation managed to alienate even its friends by spending the weekend on the phone in an attempt to reverse the decision. Arms were twisted, and by Sunday, as the Iraqis met the deadline, the Security Council’s Colombian president announced a new “consensus” decision: the impatient Americans seized the 12,000 pages, and edited out all the juicy genocidal bits for non-permanent Security Council members.

The assumption apparently was that the five permanent members were well aware of how to kill people wholesale, so it did not matter if they got the unexpurgated version. Even so, some of the elected members declared that they would still need to see any purged text if it were cited as evidence against Iraq.

When the text was delivered, most of the Security Council felt that the Iraqis had been somewhat economical with their candor. If the report were to be believed, Baghdad had initiated no new weapons research or production whatsoever since the previous inspectors left four years ago. The report did not mention the purchases of suspicious materials that the Iraqis had tried to make on the world market, nor did it explain what had happened to various armaments that the U.N. knew they had had previously.

Although a strong suspicion by most of the council that the Iraqis were lying, and strong assertions to that effect by the Americans, may be sufficient evidence for a post-Sept. 11 INS hearing, the world community demands stronger proof for a war. So the inspectors from UNMOVIC, looking for chemical and biological, and the IAEA, looking for nuclear programs, began their search. Some officials in Washington contributed a litany of complaints about the inspectors’ lack of aggression, implying that knocking on doors instead of kicking them down is some form of appeasement. However, while the British provided what information they had, mostly about Iraqi materials purchases, the U.S. was more reticent. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that Bush and top administration officials “would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not the truth and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.” UNMOVIC Chief Inspector Perricos countered with some visible exasperation: “What we’re getting and what President Bush may be getting is very different, to put it mildly.”

Relations between the U.S. and other Security Council members were equally strained by other examples of imperious caprice, and a similar pattern of arbitrary demands from the White House, followed by a climbdown to a reasonable compromise negotiated by the State Department. The most outstanding example had been the U.S. attempt to hold the oil-for-food program hostage until other members agreed to add to the Goods Review List some dual use materials to be referred to the Sanctions Committee. Not since Washington had threatened earlier in the year to close down every U.N. peacekeeping operation unless it secured exemption from the International Criminal Court, had the other Security Council members seen such a display of monomaniacal irresponsibility.

In the end, pending more discussions, the council agreed to a rollover of the program for two weeks. By Dec. 4, however, Washington’s bullying tactics once again had succeeded in alienating all the other council members, leading to what Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov called a “victory for common sense.” As the “oil-for-food” resolution raced to its midnight deadline, the U.S. agreed to continue the program for the full six months, as the Russians and others insisted, and was forced to content itself with a promise to look again at the Review List separately, within 30 days. Once again, America’s diplomats succeeded in negotiating an entirely reasonable, threat-free review of the list—since other members agreed that it was indeed suspicious that Iraq wanted huge quantities of anti-anthrax and anti- chemical weapons drugs when no one was threatening to use them.

Any such good feelings were needed to counter the bad blood caused when Washington vetoed a Dec. 20 resolution condemning Israel’s destruction of a World Food Program warehouse in Gaza, and with it 500 tons of food, and the IDF’s killing of Iain Hook, a British worker for UNRWA in Jenin. The resolution called upon Israel to abide by the Geneva Convention. All the other permanent members of the Security Council supported the resolution. With its veto, however, the U.S., which wants every jot and tittle of international law applied to Iraq, put itself implicitly on the side of the murder of U.N. relief workers and the destruction of internationally donated food.

It is perhaps significant that, for an administration that subordinates all other issues—North Korea, Cyprus, or whatever—there is just one issue that trumps its obsession with Iraq. That is Washington’s obsession with total uncritical support for the man who gave the world the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

This reminder of the administration’s disregard for international law hardly helped its diplomatic efforts to secure support for war on Iraq. Governments around the world that previously had prevaricated were forced by popular pressure to back a second, explicit, U.N. resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq. Key regional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, whose territory would be needed to mount a successful attack, made the second resolution a condition of their support. Western political allies like Canada, France and Germany reiterated their stand, and even Tony Blair, Washington’s closest ally of all, was forced to say that he would “prefer” a second resolution.

To secure a second resolution, however, the world wants explicit, unequivocal proof of gross deception by Iraq. And even though the inspectors’ visits were beginning to look more like raids, with inspections of once-sacrosanct presidential palaces, still no smoking gun or vat of bubbling botulin turned up—only empty warheads.

Delays in the deployment of U.S. troops to the region seemed to have put off the optimum military dates for the start of a war toward the end of February, or even March. Washington’s failure to provide any fruitful leads to the inspectors, however, raised suspicions about the quality of the intelligence provided to President Bush. In January, the Americans began to put more pressure on Hans Blix to take Iraqi scientists out of the country for interviews, in the hope that they would point toward the missing evidence.

The U.S. had insisted on the clauses in Resolution 1441 about taking Iraqi scientists and their families to other countries. It is one of those ideas, however, that looks great in a Washington committee room, but does not stand too much exposure to daylight. The resolution does not authorize the inspectors to kidnap Iraqi scientists and take them against their will—and none of them will volunteer, since their whole extended families would suffer if they did. American insistence on this hints at some desperation as reality sinks in with the ideologues.

Perhaps Colin Powell has hung a sign in the Oval Office reading, “It’s the geography, stupid!” because there seems to be an increasing realization that for a successful military operation, the U.S. needs allies, who need a U.N. resolution, which needs evidence.

Hence the desperation to find the weapons—which indeed are almost certainly there, but which Baghdad has had four years to hide. Each day that they remain undiscovered, however, makes President Bush’s certainty seem more a matter of fundamentalist faith than of rationality, and makes his task of persuading the rest of the world to join his crusade that much more difficult.

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

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