Global Policy Forum

Hoping to restore the coalition that fought Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War, the United States may ease its long-held demand for Iraqi arms inspections, US Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview published Monday.

While insisting that Washington eventually wants to resume such searches for signs Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction, Cheney told The Washington Times that revitalizing the ailing sanctions regime against Baghdad is more important. "I think we'd like to see the inspectors back in there," the vice president told the daily, but added: "I don't think we want to hinge our policy just to the question of whether or not the inspectors go back in there." "You've got to be able to regroup and refocus so that we do in fact once again have the support of the front line states out there, as well as the other major members of the coalition, to figure out how you move forward," said Cheney.

Asked whether the inspections were now seen as less crucial, Cheney said they "may not be as crucial if you've got other measures in place and you've got a (sanctions) regime that people are willing to support. So we'll have to see."

The Times said that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, telephoned the daily after the interview to clarify the remark, emphasizing that the vice president does not believe the inspections have become unimportant. "We expect the Iraqis to live up to all UN resolutions, including getting inspectors back in," Libby said.

However, Libby acknowledged that the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq was not imminent, the Times reported. Arab nations and several key US allies in Europe have shown growing impatience with the sanctions regime, which they say inflicts great suffering on Iraq's population but does little to sap Saddam Hussein's power.

In recent weeks, senior US officials have said the administration of President George W. Bush wants to revise the sanctions in a way that would tighten controls but spare the population, but Cheney gave few details of any new strategy "That's all part of the process of trying to reassemble the coalition around a policy that we've got a consensus on and that people are willing to live with and support," Cheney told the Times. "The regime that had been put in place some years ago has clearly been allowed to atrophy, and it's broken down."