Global Policy Forum

By Paul Taylor

Mounting international diplomatic pressure and tough talk from the United States may convince Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors, leaders attending the World Economic Forum said this weekend. But Arab and European leaders cautioned Washington that launching military action against President Saddam Hussein could wreck the global coalition against terrorism and further destabilize a region torn by Israeli-Palestinian violence.

"There are some signals and reasons to believe that we come, through the political arena, to the appropriate solution," Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the WEF on Saturday. "Everyone should have patience," he added.

A Middle Eastern leader involved in the diplomacy used similar terms to describe hints from Baghdad that Hussein may elect to cooperate with the United Nations rather than risk possible U.S. military action aimed at toppling his rule.

Iraq had recently intensified diplomatic activity and sent "some signals we have to build upon," he said on Sunday. The leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, forecast a crisis in May 2002 when the U.N. Security Council is due to adopt a new "smart sanctions" resolution, vehemently opposed by Baghdad, that would facilitate civilian imports while denying Iraq's rulers money and weapons.

President Bush raised the pressure on Iraq last week by branding it part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and North Korea, and warning that the United States would not stand by while it developed weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the West.

Iraq said on Sunday it would send a delegation to Spain for talks with the European Union as part of a diplomatic offensive apparently designed to counter any U.S. move to target Baghdad as part of Bush's anti-terror war.

OPTIONS OPEN

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials stressed Bush has not made any decision to take military action against Iraq after the war in Afghanistan, but was keeping his options open.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice urged American allies on Sunday to stop fretting about Bush's bracketing of Iraq, Iran and North Korea and get on with preventing those states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Hard-liners in the Bush administration have been pressing for action to overthrow Saddam, Washington's enduring nemesis since a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi invasion forces out of Kuwait in 1991 but stopped short of ousting him.

Arab officials attending the annual conference of the global business and political elite warned that with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict deepening, the Middle East region could ill afford another crisis over Iraq.

"I don't think we can take more shocks in the Middle East," the Arab leader said, calling for more dialogue to seek a solution to the Iraqi problem. "We don't believe that there is evidence that would (justify) this action," said Russia's Kasyanov, adding that Moscow was ready to discuss any such evidence should the United States produce it.

International monitors charged with inspecting and destroying Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction have not been allowed to work in the country since the United States, and Britain launched a military strike on Baghdad in December 1998 to punish Saddam for obstructing arms inspections.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution in 1999 offering to suspend sanctions on civilian goods if Iraq cooperated with a new arms inspection regime, but Baghdad, sensing that sanctions were eroding anyway, rejected it.

Now diplomats say Saddam may be recalculating in light of the Bush administration's use of massive military force in Afghanistan and mounting rhetoric against Iraq. "If Saddam were smart, he'd let the inspectors in now. The Americans would be completely wrong-footed because they don't agree among themselves on what to do," a European envoy said.

Washington did not trust the U.N. arms inspection regime, he said, and was unwilling to let Iraq off the hook of sanctions but could be upstaged by a bold gesture of Iraqi cooperation, backed by Russia and European nations.

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