Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

After three years of refusing to deal with United Nations arms inspectors, a high-level Iraqi delegation is about to come face to face for the first time with the leader of the inspection commission, Hans Blix.

That the Iraqis have agreed to this meeting, set for Thursday, after asking to see only Secretary General Kofi Annan, is indicative of the concern they have that the threat of an American attack is real, if not imminent, diplomats and United Nations officials said in interviews this week.

While no one expects a quick resumption of arms inspections in Iraq, diplomats said the Iraqis appear more conciliatory. They also said the five permanent Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — are more unified than in recent years at least on the demand that until inspectors return on the Council's terms, no relief from sanctions can be permitted.

Dr. Blix, a Swedish disarmament expert and international lawyer, said in an interview on Monday that the Council's terms meant unrestricted access and no Iraqi veto over the nationality of inspectors. "I am not giving any discounts on Security Council resolutions," he said. "There are no sanctuaries. The resolutions make it quite clear that there should be access that is unconditional, immediate and unrestricted."

The Iraqis sought this week's meeting after a year of cold-shouldering the United Nations and another two years of playing Council members off one another. When Mr. Annan agreed to the talks, he decided to include Dr. Blix, executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, created in December 1999 to replace an earlier body, the United Nations Special Commission. A senior United Nations legal counsel will also be present.

The Iraqi delegation to what is expected to be only the first round of talks will be led by a new foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who is considered more amenable than his blustering predecessor, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.

Weapons experts will be included in the Iraqi group, the first to venture out on this issue since a reshuffle in the Iraqi foreign affairs hierarchy that may have reduced the influence of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, diplomats said. Mr. Aziz recently visited Moscow and Beijing but received little in the way of support from the Russians or Chinese for continued defiance of the Security Council.

At the International Peace Academy, a research organization in New York that works closely with the United Nations, David Malone, the organization's president, said American threats to hit Iraq may have influenced thinking in countries like Russia and France, which have large commercial interests there. If the government of Iraq were to be dislodged or toppled by United States action, what would happen to those interests — to the debt of up to $8 billion Iraq owes the Russians?

"Saddam Hussein may have played his cards wrong," Mr. Malone, a Canadian diplomat, said in an interview. "Overall, patience with Iraq has pretty much run out."

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, said today that Iraq's team looked promising.

"The fact that they are coming with a senior and quite serious delegation is a good sign that they want to have discussions with the secretary general about — as they would see it — the options open to them," he said. "As the Security Council, and I'm sure the secretary general, see it, the options open to them are compliance."

Britain and other Security Council members have met with Mr. Annan to encourage him not to allow the Iraqis to shift talks away from their immediate obligations. Iraq, seeking control over revenue from oil sales, wants a timetable for the lifting of penalties. Money now goes into escrow accounts, with some earmarked to assist the Kurds in northern Iraq, to pay reparations for the 1990 occupation of Kuwait and to support arms inspection.

Dr. Blix has used some of that money to turn the commission he has headed since early 2000 into a much more technically professional body than its predecessor. A vast data base with sophisticated search engines for cross-referencing archival material on Iraq has been created, he said.

Satellite imagery of Iraqi buildings, roads, power lines or other objects of interest to inspectors has been purchased from commercial suppliers. A blowup of the streets of Baghdad hangs on his office wall.

About 230 inspectors from dozens of countries have been trained or are now in training to work in Iraq, Dr. Blix said.

The Monterey Institute of International Studies in California has produced a media file of 3,000 to 4,000 articles or other material published on Iraqi weapons, including testimony from defectors and intelligence leaks. Technology has been upgraded. "They have acquainted themselves with a lot of new techniques," Dr. Blix said of his inspectors. "Sensors, tagging, cameras, etc. — all this moves very fast."

The question hanging over the United Nations now is whether the United States really wants arms inspectors to return, based on public comments made by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld questioning their value. Some diplomats say the United States would not want inspectors on the ground if a military attack were being planned; the last inspectors to work in Iraq had to be pulled out ahead of American bombing in 1998.

Other diplomats say they think that Washington fears that inspectors could be used to give the appearance of Iraqi compliance while continuing to stonewall inspectors and hide weapons programs. Publicly, however, Bush administration officials call for the return of inspectors in line with Security Council demands.

As the Council approaches several critical months of work on the Iraq issue, European diplomats see the most unity on an agreement on a new list of what Iraq can buy freely with its oil money and of which items will be open to scrutiny because they look like civilian goods but could have military uses. That agreement is expected to be completed by mid- May.

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