By DAVID USBORNE and KIM SENGUPTA
NEW YORK - The United Nations is likely to throw into disarray America's war plans for Iraq by introducing a timetable for weapons inspections that could give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a breathing space of almost 12 months.
The extended timetable could exhaust the patience
of Washington, which envisages attacking much earlier, probably in February.
The Bush Administration is asking Congress to endorse the military option before the UN makes its move.
President George W. Bush "reserves the right to act in the interests of the United States and its friends and allies", his spokesman said.
Such a disavowal of the UN by the US would spell both war and diplomatic disaster for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who helped to persuade Washington to bring the crisis back under the UN's umbrella. Britain's global influence depends largely on its permanent seat at an effective and respected UN Security Council. The organisation will be shunted into irrelevance, diplomats fear, if Bush unilaterally goes to war.
Even as envoys scurried in New York to craft a new resolution on Iraq, the Pentagon was privately briefing on plans to deploy 250,000 ground troops in the country to spearhead an assault aimed at toppling Saddam and his regime.
Nailing down a schedule for inspections will be the primary objective of the resolution on Iraq that Britain wants to see passed in the Security Council before September 30. On that date, Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, is due to start talks with Iraqi officials in Vienna on arrangements for the return of his teams.
Blix is not expected to begin serious deployment of inspectors before the end of October, a process likely to take two months.
Thereafter, an existing Security Council text on Iraq, UN resolution 1284, stipulates that inspectors will need 60 more days to decide what they need to do. Proper inspections would begin, therefore, only in early March, and last until the end of August.
Diplomats acknowledge that the process could be shattered if Saddam reneges on the promise to give inspectors unfettered or unconditional access. Indeed, any snag or hiccup could give Washington a pretext to go to war.
That is why Britain will try to convince doubters in the council, principally Russia and France, that a resolution reinforcing 1284 with new deadlines and demands must be adopted soon. Failure to do so would leave Saddam with greater leeway to manipulate the process and increase the likelihood of US aggression.
In Baghdad, they are now preparing for war at the Al-Mansour Hospital. What supplies can be spared are being stockpiled, emergency shelters are being prepared for the patients, and contingency rotas drawn up for the medical staff, who have been told to be ready to move to outlying areas at short notice.
"People everywhere are saving water, food, petrol, candles," said the hospital's director, Dr Luay Quasha. "We are doing all that, but also reserving all the basic medical apparatus one needs for casualties in conflict - blood supplies, fluids, operating theatres, antibiotics, and anaesthetics ...
"The staff will be working in 24-hour shifts, we shall have rest stations, and we shall have transport ready to evacuate the patients when necessary. These are normal war-time practices."
Did he approve of Iraq's offer to allow back the UN weapons inspectors? Did he not think war could be avoided? "Do you like war? Do you like death?" asks Quasha, 48, who trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, in response.
"I don't, so of course I welcome the inspectors coming back. The American people understand the suffering of the Iraqi people, but the American Government, they are the problem."
The hospital is, in many ways, a parable for Iraqi society. Despite years of tussling between the sanctions committee and Saddam's regime in which medicine had become a political football, there have been some improvements.
Nothing like enough equipment and drugs are allowed, say the medical staff, and a junior doctor's salary of US$400 ($847.25) a month before the Gulf War is now US$20 ($42.36). But things are better than a few years ago, and the prolonged privation has resulted in honing improvisation. Now all that may be jeopardised.
Al-Mansour has the familiar sights of misery and hopelessness. The children's wards are filled with patients suffering from cancer, the result, say the Iraqis and some independent western medical experts, of depleted uranium used by the US and Britain during the Gulf War. Washington and London deny this.
There is also a large increase in premature births, brought about, say the doctors, by a number of factors, including the mothers' psychological traumas caused by living year after year expecting conflict.
The traders in the main market say people have been stocking up for a while, and there has been no change in this since Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz made the announcement about the monitors.
Mohammed Tayyab Hussein, a trader in Rashid St, said: "Business is good at the moment, but I don't know how long it will last.
"If the Americans invade, there will be complete breakdown of law and a lot of killings. Everyone has guns here and a lot of scores to settle."
- INDEPENDENT
Further reading
Feature: War with Iraq
Iraq links and resources
UN inspections on slower timetable than suits Bush
By DAVID USBORNE and KIM SENGUPTA
NEW YORK - The United Nations is likely to throw into disarray America's war plans for Iraq by introducing a timetable for weapons inspections that could give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a breathing space of almost 12 months.
The extended timetable could exhaust the patience
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