US balks at return of UN inspectors to Iraq

10.00am

WASHINGTON - The United States has opposed letting UN inspectors return to Iraq to verify weapons disarmament, setting up a possible new Security Council confrontation with Russia, Germany and France.

White House officials also made clear they want to avoid any kind of deal that would link a lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq to a return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. Russia wants to link the two issues.

Asked if the administration expected UN inspectors to resume their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq any time soon, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States and the allies with which it invaded Iraq and toppled President Saddam Hussein were now doing that job themselves.

He said President Bush wanted to focus on methods that are "the most effective to get the job done."

"The coalition has taken on responsibility for the dismantling of Iraq's WMD and missile programmes, which is part of the international community's shared goal...," Fleischer told reporters.

"We are looking forward, not backward. Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, and we will need to reassess the framework design to disarm the regime given the new facts on the ground."

Conclusive evidence of Iraqi development of weapons of mass destruction has yet to be found by invasion forces. US officials, aware they would face global anger if no such weapons are found, say they need more time for the search.

The US relationship with chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has been an uneasy one. In the run-up to the Iraq war, some in Washington felt Blix was playing for time to extend UN inspectors in order to avoid war at all costs.

Blix did nothing to dissuade the doubters by questioning intelligence pointing to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction used by the United States and Britain to justify invading the country.

"I think it's been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been shaky," Blix told the BBC on Tuesday.

Fleischer suggested Blix failed to achieve disarmament properly by not interviewing Iraqi scientists with knowledge of the banned weapons programmes as US forces are now doing.

"To find the weapons you need to have Iraqis tell you where they are. That is consistent with our approach now," he said.

Blix addressed the UN Security Council in closed session on Tuesday on his readiness to field an inspection team. UN verification of whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction may be the key to lifting UN economic sanctions on Iraq as pushed by Bush.

Fleischer said there was no need to make lifting economic sanctions dependent on verifying disarmament.

"Clearly the United Nations has the ability to pass new resolutions that supersede old resolutions, particularly when the old resolutions are predicated on the existence of a regime that is now gone," he said.

US officials said that by complicating the US effort to have economic sanctions lifted on Iraq, France, Germany and Russia, which together opposed Bush's war plans, could hurt their own push for a bigger UN role.

"It's going to depend a lot on their behavior," one senior official said of the three nations. "Let's see how the French, Russians and Germans and others deal with that issue (of lifting the sanctions)."

While US forces have yet to find chemical or biological weapons or evidence that Saddam was building a nuclear bomb, US officials remain confident the evidence will be found but insist it will take time.

"This guy (Saddam) had years to hide things. They are experts at concealing programmes and infrastructure in a dual-use capacity designed to fool inspectors," said one US official. "This is not an instantaneous process."

Meanwhile in a surprise move, France backed an immediate suspension of UN sanctions against Iraq, meeting the United States half way in its drive to get the embargoes lifted.

But France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said the UN oil-for-food programmeme, which collects Iraq's oil revenues, should be kept under UN control for the time being but adjusted to Iraq's current needs.

"We should immediately suspend the sanctions," de la Sabliere said. "And about the oil-for-food programme, we think there should be some adjustment to the programme with a view to phasing out this programme."

De la Sabliere said that financial and some trade sanctions needed to be suspended to enable Iraq to get back on its feet.

The Bush administration wants the sanctions lifted entirely and reacted coolly to the French proposals.

Unlike Russia, France did not insist that UN arms inspectors first verify Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction before there could be movement on sanctions.

"The lifting of the sanctions, which is, I think the objective of all of us, is linked to the certification of the disarmament of Iraq," de la Sabliere said. "Meanwhile we could suspend the sanctions and adjust the oil for food programme with the idea of phasing it out."

The embargoes were imposed in August 1990 shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The oil-for-food programme, which comes up for renewal in June, is the key to Iraq's spending oil revenues for reconstruction after the US-led invasion that deposed President Saddam Hussein's government. Oil proceeds are deposited in a UN escrow account out of which food, medicine and other civilian goods for Iraq are purchased.

The French ambassador made the comments to reporters after a closed-door Security Council meeting called to hear a briefing by chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and discuss the Iraq crisis for the first time since the end of the war.

But the United States, in contrast to other council members including Britain, is cool to Blix, who will retire on June 30. Instead it is recruiting former UN inspectors from the United States, Britain and Australia to verify any discovery of banned weapons by the military.

'SANCTIONS LIFTED NOT SUSPENDED'

John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said sanctions should be lifted rather than suspended as soon as possible and "we look forward to working together with the delegation of France and other delegations toward that end."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was cooler, saying, "It may be a move sort of in the right direction, some beginning of understanding that the situation is different. But the situation is so much different that there is no reason for the sanctions any more."

Negroponte reaffirmed that the return of the UN inspection unit Blix heads, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), was not foreseen.

"The coalition has assumed responsibility for disarming of Iraq," Negroponte said. "Now that there is a somewhat more permissive military environment the coalition effort will be substantially increased and expanded."

Russia's UN Ambassador Sergei Lavrov made it clear that Security Council resolutions tie the lifting or suspension of sanctions to verification by inspectors that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs.

"We are not at all opposing lifting of sanctions. What we are insisting on is that Security Council resolutions must be implemented," Lavrov told reporters. But he said he was "ready to discuss the French proposal."

"We all want to know that there are no WMDs in Iraq, and the only way to verify it is to have inspectors in Iraq and to see for themselves and to report back to the Security Council. As soon as they deliver their report the sanctions could be lifted," he said.

With the Bush administration ignoring a UN role in postwar Iraq, Blix has been faulted by US officials for not coming up with a "smoking gun" on Baghdad's dangerous weapons, a prime reason for the US invasion of Iraq.

"We may not be the only ones in the world who have credibility but I do think we have credibility for being objective and independent," Blix told reporters.

He denied he was in competition with whatever the United States planned on inspection in Iraq but noted that UNMOVIC had an enormous database with information on what had been said and found in Iraq in the past.

Blix said inspectors called in by the United States would be objective.

"But at the same time I am also convinced that the world and the Security Council (would) like to have the inspection and verification bear the imprint of independence and of some institution that is authorized by the whole international community," Blix said.

- REUTERS

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