UN inspectors likely to face many problems in Iraq

WASHINGTON - UN arms inspectors are likely to face major logistical and practical problems in their drive to uncover Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, from Iraqi officials who have had years of experience in frustrating past inspections.

Former inspectors and other experts said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might feel he has no choice other than to allow the inspectors back into his country to avert the threat of a US-led military attack. But he would still make every effort to hide as many of his weapons programmes as possible.

President George W Bush has described Saddam's previous tactics as "cheat and retreat" and has said he would not tolerate them in the future.

"There are a million ways the Iraqis could try to frustrate the inspectors. The most worrying scenario is the accumulation of small obstacles and deceits, each of which taken alone is too small to justify a war, but which collectively could add up to a serious problem," said Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently edited a book on how to make inspections work.

She said the key to success was maintaining unity among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and maintaining a credible threat of war if Iraq did not comply.

"As soon as one of those two conditions disappears, the inspections efforts will start to fail," said Mathews.

The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said inspections would prove unworkable without Iraqi cooperation.

A UN Security Council resolution, adopted last Friday, ordered Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction and laid down a timetable. Iraq's UN ambassador said on Wednesday his country will accept the resolution without conditions.

Baghdad will have until December 8 to provide the United Nations with a list of dangerous weapons it still might have as well as civilian chemical and biological "dual use" components, that might have military applications.

Inspections will then begin and the inspectors would have until February 21 to file an initial report on Iraqi compliance. However, they must tell the Security Council of any serious violations sooner.

Jonathan Tucker, who worked as a nuclear inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, said Baghdad previously employed many techniques to frustrate the inspections. They included: providing incomplete, false or distorted statements, trying to lead inspectors away from sensitive sites, making key officials unavailable for interviews, destroying evidence, intimidating inspectors, disguising and camouflaging facilities and bugging rooms used by inspectors.

On several occasions, key officials were unavailable for interviews because their daughters were supposedly getting married. Other times, inspectors were told that people they wished to interview had been involved in car crashes on the way to their interviews.

"The new inspections regime will be much tougher than the old one but Iraq is a large country, about the size of California, with many places to hide weapons and clandestine production facilities, so the inspection process must be supported with accurate and timely intelligence," said Tucker, who is now at the US Institute of Peace.

Iraq has had four years since the last inspectors withdrew in which to build underground sites and mobile facilities. But inspectors will be armed with new tools, including more accurate aerial and satellite surveillance data, portable X-ray devices and hand-held sensors that can instantly identify biological agents such as anthrax.

Unlike in the past, the inspectors will have the right to interview witnesses without Iraqi minders being present. They could also take scientists and their families out of the country, though several experts believe that would be unworkable in practice.

Terence Taylor, who was a senior nuclear inspector in Iraq from 1993 to 1997, said he was worried there would be too few inspectors and that they would be too inexperienced.

"When we were there, the Iraqis managed to penetrate our organisation and suborn UN personnel in New York as well as in our forward staging station in Bahrain. They had paid off key people so they often knew our plans in advance," he said.

"You must assume they will bug hotel rooms and other facilities used by inspectors and they will intimidate witnesses the inspectors wish to interview," said Taylor, who is now president of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"The Iraqi side has a detailed knowledge of what was uncovered by the previous inspectors and is very experienced in receiving inspectors, handling visits to sites and preparing for interviews," he said.

David Albright, who worked for the nuclear inspections team from 1992 to 1997, said the 250 trained inspectors available to the United Nations was not enough. Scores of inspectors will be needed to secure and investigate individual sites, but it was crucial that the inspectors keep the Iraqis off-balance by swooping on several sites at one time.

Albright also worried whether the inspectors would be sufficiently persistent and determined.

"It took me many years to learn how to do interviews and I was sometimes tricked. You need people used to dealing with the negative side of human behavior and I fear they may be short of those kinds of people," said Albright, who is now president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

Further reading
Feature: War with Iraq

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