Global Policy Forum

By Brian Whitaker

Shortly after Colin Powell took over as US secretary of state, he talked about rebuilding the international consensus on Iraq. Well, in a roundabout and rather accidental way, that is what has happened with the new security council resolution on weapons inspections.

Never has such a draconian measure been greeted with such widespread relief. The relief lies in the hope that this will avert war, though there are exceptions - like the Likud wing of the Republican party, which is furious.

After signing up to the resolution, Russia, China and France issued a joint statement saying the revised text excluded "any automaticity in the use of force" against Iraq and they had received confirmation from the US and Britain that this was indeed what it meant.

Syria, currently the only Arab member of the security council, also gave its support - though it had earlier threatened to abstain. After receiving a letter from Colin Powell it decided that voting yes would "keep the region away from premeditated designs of a military strike on Iraq that would benefit Israel and enemies of the Arab nation," according to the official Syrian news agency.

Similar views can be heard in much of the Arab world. The general opinion is that the resolution has lessened the prospect of war - though it's unclear by how much.

Abd al-Muna'im Said, of the al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, suggested last week that it had reduced the chances of conflict by only a fraction - from 100% to 85%. Some are more optimistic, others less.

There are, however, two great unknowns that make assessments difficult. The first is what, if anything, Iraq has to hide. Nobody outside Baghdad really knows the extent of any work Iraq has been doing on weapons of mass destruction since the inspectors left in 1998.

The other unknown is the real intention of the Bush administration: would it really be prepared to settle for disarming Iraq rather than removing the regime? The signs from Baghdad so far are that Iraq does want to co-operate with the weapons inspectors.

It would certainly be foolish to do otherwise, since the survival of the regime hangs on a successful outcome. In Iraq's dream scenario, inspections would be completed quickly, Iraq would get a clean bill of health, sanctions would be lifted and the Washington hawks would retreat, deprived of their war.

This is fine provided, of course, that Iraq has not been quietly acquiring new weapons of mass destruction and intends real cooperation with the inspectors, not some elaborate programme of deception as happened before.

If, however, Iraq is found to have been cheating on a grand scale, inspections will move into the nightmare scenario. The hawks will be vindicated and countries that have tried to moderate the US stance will feel betrayed by Iraq - and will see no reason to resist military action. In those circumstances Saddam will have only himself to blame.

But a more probable scenario than either the dream or the nightmare lies somewhere in between. The terms for inspections set out in the resolution are extremely tough. This has certainly fuelled suspicions that the US will be looking for any opportunity to declare Iraq in breach of the resolution and start a war, but it is also the result of Iraq's dissembling and concealment during previous inspections.

Within 30 days, Iraq must provide "accurate, full, and complete" disclosure, not only of "all aspects" of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes but of other chemical, biological and nuclear programmes unrelated to weapons.

The amount of detail required is immense: "ballistic missiles, and other delivery systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and dispersal systems designed for use on aircraft, including any holdings and precise locations of such weapons, components, sub-components, stocks of agents, and related material and equipment, the locations and work of its research, development and production facilities ..."

Anyone who goes through the annual, unnerving experience of filling in a tax return will know the feeling: have I forgotten anything ... have I understood all the questions properly? This, together with other requirements, means that Iraq - no matter how hard it tries - is likely to be in technical breach of the resolution right from the start.

That does not automatically mean war, though. Breaches have to be referred back to the security council for a decision (though the US still claims a right to act unilaterally if it chooses). A lot will depend on the attitude of Iraqi officials and the inspectors. If the inspectors believe that Iraq is genuinely trying to cooperate, then it may be allowed some leeway on minor matters.

For as long as Iraq appears cooperative, it can also count on Russia, China, France and most of the Arab countries for diplomatic help in smoothing the inspections through.

Assuming that Iraq really does have nothing to hide, all might therefore be well apart from the unpredictable factor of the Washington hawks who currently have their tails between their legs.

Since President Bush made his conciliatory speech to the UN general assembly in September, the United States has gradually hitched itself more and more to the multilateralist wagon - so much so that it probably cannot unhitch itself now in a hurry. Having decided, with some reluctance at first, to work through the United Nations, it would need a very strong excuse to wage war on Iraq unilaterally.

Colin Powell, who had become almost a nonentity in the US administration only a few months ago, also appears to be back in the foreign policy driving seat. Denying that the security council resolution could be construed as a pretext for war, he reportedly told the Syrian foreign minister last week that he would not have spent seven weeks negotiating its text "if the US administration had any intention of resorting to military action".

But the hawks won't stay quiet for long and if deprived of a war might they, perhaps, try something else.

The provisions of the resolution offer some interesting possibilities. There is, for example, the right of inspectors to declare "exclusion zones" (of unspecified size) around inspection sites, "including surrounding areas and transit corridors, in which Iraq will suspend ground and aerial movement so that nothing is changed in or taken out of a site being inspected".

It does not take much imagination to see how, by declaring an exclusion zone that confines sections of the special republican guard to barracks, the inspectors might assist Iraqi dissidents in mounting a coup against the regime.

Or suppose that the inspectors, by accident or design, declared an exclusion zone that happened to have Saddam Hussein inside. What would they do? Wish him good morning or arrest him for war crimes?

No. They would run as fast as they could in case a predator aircraft, of the kind that assassinated six al-Qaida suspects in Yemen last week, happened to be circling overhead.

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