Global Policy Forum

By Colum Lynch

Despite President Bush's demand last month that Iraq allow a return of U.N. weapons inspectors, the United States has yet to begin rallying other countries at the United Nations to force Baghdad to accept inspections, U.S. and U.N. officials said today.

U.N. diplomats said that U.S. officials rarely discuss the president's desire to see weapons inspectors return to Iraq. Hans Blix, the Swedish executive director of the U.N. weapons inspection unit, said in a recent interview that he has seen no sign that the Bush administration has "accelerated" its efforts.

John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said today that the main focus of U.S.-Iraqi diplomacy at the U.N. over the next several months will be to secure an agreement with Russia on a plan to revamp U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

Under the terms of a humanitarian exemption to sanctions, Iraq is permitted to sell billions of dollars of oil each year to purchase food and medicine and to rebuild the country's battered infrastructure. While all the proceeds of Iraq's oil sales are supposed to be placed in a U.N. escrow account, U.S. and U.N. diplomats estimate that Baghdad siphons off as much as $2 billion a year in oil revenue to purchase luxury goods and revive its banned weapons programs.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been working for nearly a year to persuade the Security Council to tighten U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But he has faced opposition from Iraq's closest ally in the council, Russia, and its neighbors -- Jordan, Syria and Turkey -- who profit from the illicit trade.

Negroponte said the administration's current strategy is designed to achieve consensus in the council on a key component of U.S. policy -- compiling an agreed-upon list of items with potential military applications that could not be sold to Iraq without Security Council approval -- before moving onto to more contentious issues such as weapons inspectors.

Russia agreed in late November to begin negotiations with a view to endorsing an amended version of the list before June 1. But it has also insisted that Washington begin parallel discussions to clarify a 1999 Security Council resolution calling for the return of inspectors. Moscow hopes that a fresh negotiation on that resolution would provide Iraq with a clearer commitment from the council to suspend sanctions.

"We need to focus on something you can really get done, while thinking about how we're going to move on to the next thing," Negroponte told reporters during a luncheon at his residence. "This is an issue" that the Security Council's five permanent members "and the council as a whole have now agreed."

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