By Steven R. Weisman
New York TimesNovember 10, 2002
United Nations weapons inspectors plan to force an early test of Saddam Hussein's intentions by demanding a comprehensive list of weapons sites and checking whether it matches a list of more than 100 priority sites compiled by Western experts, Bush administration and United Nations officials say.
The officials said the site list had been quietly put together in the last several months, winnowed down from more than 800 in the United Nations' database. The short list was derived from the findings of previous weapons inspections and the latest intelligence culled from defectors and other sources by American and other intelligence experts.
Fortified by the approval on Friday of a tough Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq comply with a new inspection regime, United Nations officials are expected on the ground in Iraq on Nov. 18. A week or so later, the first inspectors are to arrive and begin their work.
A provision in the resolution says that any "false statements or omissions" regarding weapons sites would constitute a "material breach of Iraq's obligations."
Many experts say Mr. Hussein is more likely to defy the inspectors than to cooperate. But the concern in the administration is to make sure any defiance by Iraq is beyond dispute. Only then could the administration convince the United Nations, its allies and Americans in general that war is necessary.
Many administration officials say they would far prefer a bold rebuff by Mr. Hussein, rather than have him seem to cooperate but actually try to run out the clock with evasions and confusing tactics in the hope that support for war will subside. Speed is important, military experts say, because the cooler winter months, ending in February or March, are the optimal time for an attack against Iraq.
The chief of the inspection team is Hans Blix, executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic. Mr. Blix, who is to lead the inspections of biological and chemical weapons, said this week that the first team of inspectors would number between 80 and 100. Mohamed ElBaradei is to lead the team of nuclear weapons inspectors.
Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei have personally assured top Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary — that their teams will be assertive in their demands of inspection sites. Their first order of business is to ask for Mr. Hussein's list of such sites.
Administration officials say it should be easy to tell whether those sites match the ones on the inspectors' list. But not everyone is convinced.
Martin Indyk, a former staff member of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, recalled that while monitoring Iraq inspections in the 1990's, he frequently went to bed at night convinced that Washington had solid intelligence information on weapons sites. But often, he said, the next morning showed nothing was there. "There's a risk in the whole enterprise of not finding anything," he said.
Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who will be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the new Senate, said: "The inspectors may have some success unearthing things and revealing them to the world. But my own view is that it will be very difficult to find and discover the evidence. How can you tell if a kettle where shampoo is being made was once used to make anthrax?"
As for Mr. Hussein's list of sites, people with experience in the matter recall that shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein declared that Iraq had no nuclear weapons or biological programs but that his forces had already used chemical weapons.
"It was a blatantly false declaration," said Timothy McCarthy, a former weapons inspector. "As we went along, the lies became smaller and more calculated."
"I suspect that the chances are better than even that Iraq will come clean on something, maybe something of importance," Mr. McCarthy said. "It will be something like, `We just discovered that a Republican Guard officer had kept two anthrax bombs in his family's villa. He died and his wife called and told us about it.' The Iraqis then hand the information over to Unmovic and say: look how we're cooperating. That would be very consistent with prior Iraqi strategy."
One way of provoking a confrontation would be for weapons inspectors to demand to go to a site and find the Iraqis either blocking it or delaying the inspectors' entry, providing time for removal of any incriminating evidence.
"You know, they slammed the doors to the Agricultural Ministry and left people in the parking lot," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said last week, referring to what happened in the late 1990's.
To thwart such tactics, experts say, the United States would have to use spy planes to monitor compliance with a demand that the Iraqis freeze the site, with nothing — not even a donkey cart — allowed to go in or out. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, has said that a delay of only two hours in a requested entry should constitute a violation.
But some experts think it might be hard to turn Iraqi dilatory tactics into a justification for war.
"The likelihood of Saddam providing a very clear noncooperation is small," said Ivo H. Daalder, who was on the National Security staff under Mr. Clinton. "He's likely to cooperate sufficiently for the process to continue. Is a two-hour delay in entering a building sufficient to lead to war, if, on the other hand, there is sufficient progress in visiting sites and gathering material and destroying it?"
Administration officials and experts say the inspections team faces an early quandary as to how quickly to demand access to highly sensitive sites, where incriminating evidence is most likely to be found. The experts say the inspectors cannot move so quickly that it looks like a deliberate provocation to Iraq.
Anything that smacks of a deliberate challenge, aimed at instigating Iraqi countermeasures, might alienate the French or the Russians. The administration is counting on French, Russian and Arab envoys to try to persuade Mr. Hussein behind the scenes to cooperate with the inspections if he wants to avoid war.
"Let's say that Saddam, despite all his past history, manages to subtly suppress the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but give the impression that he is cooperating," Mr. Lugar said. "We then come to a dilemma. We have to say: cough it up or suffer the consequences. It could lead to a very difficult situation."
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