Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

United Nations - Leading members of the Security Council, deadlocked over the nomination of a new chief arms inspector for Iraq, have apparently decided to ask Secretary General Kofi Annan to withdraw the name of Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish diplomat. They want the job offered to another Swedish disarmament expert, Hans Blix. Diplomats said the decision could be announced within a day or two, although the Security Council has not yet acted in any formal way and the plan could be upset. France, Russia and to some extent China opposed Mr. Ekeus. Tonight diplomats said that those three, and the United States and Britain -- all five council members with vetoes -- were close to a formal agreement on Mr. Blix.

In Washington tonight, a State Department spokeswoman said that the department had no immediate comment on the possible selection of Mr. Blix. A senior Clinton administration official said, however, that Mr. Blix appeared to have the technical, managerial and diplomatic experience required for the the new chief arms inspector. "Blix clearly meets the criteria," he said. Mr. Blix, 72, was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization in Vienna, from 1981 to 1997. During that period he became a contentious figure among arms control experts because the agency, which regularly inspected Iraqi nuclear programs and fuel stockpiles, was accused of failing to detect a secret weapons program that did not come to light until after the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf.

The agency has since been considerably strengthened, diplomats say, because nations that make up its governing board realized that it had not been given enough power to conduct more intrusive searches. Agency inspectors who missed the bomb project had in fact been limited to looking at material Iraq had declared under the 1968 nonproliferation treaty. Those materials covered by the 1968 treaty, including natural and low-enriched uranium, still remaining in Iraq were inspected by the agency this week.

After the 1991 war, inspectors learned in Iraq that a country could run a parallel bomb program completely out of sight while fulfilling all the obligations associated with its peaceful nuclear projects. By the early 1990's, the atomic agency had uncovered another secret program in North Korea. Since 1994, when an agreement was signed with the North Koreans to phase out that program in return for foreign investment in peaceful reactors, the agency has had inspectors permanently stationed in North Korea.

Mr. Blix, an expert in international and constitutional law, had some differences with the United Nations Special Commission, Unscom, which was created after the 1991 war to destroy Iraq's prohibited biological and chemical weapons and missile systems and the means to make them. Unscom became what diplomats call the senior partner in the Iraq inspection programs, with the atomic energy agency, which inspected nuclear facilities, playing a secondary role. Mr. Ekeus was Unscom's executive chairman for much of that time.

Part of the friction between Unscom and the atomic energy agency -- and between Mr. Blix and Mr. Ekeus -- was the suggestion that Mr. Blix made before his retirement that at some point any inspection commission would have to decide that it had found all it could find in prohibited weapons and materials and could move to long-term but rigorous monitoring. Unscom, on the other hand, was more determined under both Mr. Ekeus and his successor, Richard Butler, to pursue all leads until virtually every question was answered and every missing item was found or accounted for. The Iraqis consistently trumpeted these differences to the detriment of Unscom. If Iraq's past praise for the atomic energy agency is any guide, the government of President Saddam Hussein will have to think of new reasons for rejecting Mr. Blix.