United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan deepened splits this week over how the international community should respond to an Iraqi invitation for the chief UN weapons inspector to visit Baghdad by saying such a move could be considered under certain conditions.
Annan told the Security Council, itself deeply divided over the invitation, that he was prepared to consider talks between Iraq and the weapons inspector, Hans Blix, if Baghdad honoured the UN requirements over how the inspectors would operate.
The United States and Britain — and Blix himself — have rejected the invitation out of hand, saying it falls far short of the guidelines for weapons inspections laid down in a 1999 UN resolution. But a few hours before Annan met council members at a regular monthly lunch, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Yuri Fedotov, challenged that position.
Fedotov called the invitation from Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, the ”first step on the way to full-scale renewal of cooperation between Baghdad and the UN”.
The Security Council is not due to discuss Iraq until August 21, but Russia wants an urgent debate on the inspections this week. France was expected on Monday to back the demand.
Annan said if Blix and his team went to Baghdad they would ”have a specific programme that may not entirely coincide with what the Iraqis have in mind. But if [the Iraqis] were to agree to the position that Blix had laid out for them, in accordance with the UN resolutions, we may be closer,” he said. ”Whether this is a real break and a real change in attitude is something that we will have to test.”
Asked about US threats to topple Saddam Hussein, Annan repeated ”it would be unwise to attack Iraq, given the current circumstances of what’s happening in the Middle East”.
Speculation before the meeting suggested a majority of Security Council members wanted to ask Baghdad for clarification of its invitation to determine what strings were attached and whether it was compatible with UN guidelines on inspections.
The US is opposed to a Security Council debate on the Iraqi letter, which Washington views as a ploy to buy time and divide the UN over inspections. Washington currently holds the presidency of the council but any member has the right to raise a subject for discussion.
A US official in New York said the administration ”would take into consideration the views of others to see if there is something we should do about this”. But he added: ”Our view is that we don’t need further discussions. We don’t think there is anything new there.”
Security Council Resolution 1284 lays down the required procedures for the return of inspectors to Iraq for the first time since they left hurriedly in December 1998, days before Anglo-US air strikes aimed at punishing Baghdad for its routine obstruction of inspections.
The Sabri letter simply calls on Blix and his aides to visit Baghdad to discuss what work has to be done to declare Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. But under Resolution 1284, a team of experts from the UN monitoring verification and inspection commission would have 60 days to travel around Iraq unhindered before drawing up a programme of work necessary to verify Iraqi compliance.
Both the US and Britain have dismissed the Iraqi invitation, portraying it as an attempt to muddy the issue and score propaganda points.
Meanwhile, reports Michael White, the United States Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham, on Monday urged Britain and other allies to emulate the Americans in building up oil reserves to help prevent global economic disruption in the event of war in the Middle East.
During a visit to the International Petroleum Exchange in London, Abraham confirmed last week’s reports that the US has already started building up reserves in caverns beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
With a capacity of 700-million barrels, the officially named strategic petroleum reserve is being filled to prevent the kind of oil shock that depressed the global economy during the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries-led oil crisis of the 1970s and again when the 1991 Gulf War forced up oil prices. That price rise forced President George W Bush’s father out of office a year later.
On Monday Abraham insisted that the US move was merely a matter of ”overall energy security” and not linked to fears that oil supplies from the Middle East could be disrupted by a conflict with Iraq.
”Not related to any specific kind of matter, but we have suggested that as we are moving to fill our reserves, others should consider making sure that their reserves are adequate,” he said.
Washington’s doubt about European resolve to take a tough line in a crisis is reciprocated by European sensitivity to economic shocks that Americans do not feel so severely. Visiting US officials feel obliged to give what they regard as wake-up calls.
Abraham’s comments will inevitably fuel the belief that the US is set on military action to topple Hussein, probably next year after US congressional elections in November. — (c) Guardian Newspapers