US talks tough as ground slips away

NEW YORK - United Nations weapons inspectors moved ahead yesterday with plans to return to Iraq as the United States fought to hold together a fragile coalition that would set tough new terms for Iraqi disarmament.

Iraq's offer to readmit arms experts without conditions appeared to sap momentum from the Bush Administration's campaign for a UN Security Council resolution that could threaten military force if Baghdad did not comply.

"The United Nations must act," President George W. Bush said yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee. "It's time to determine if they will be a force for peace or an ineffective debating society."

But Russia said the Iraqi decision made further action in the Security Council unnecessary at this stage.

France, which like Russia has veto power in the 15-member council, expressed scepticism. And the Arab League, which played a major role in getting Iraq to accept the inspectors, called on states to refrain from using force.

In the first move towards restarting arms inspections, chief UN inspector Hans Blix met Iraqi officials to arrange logistics for future work.

The two sides agreed to discuss practical arrangements at another meeting in Vienna the week after next.

"In this meeting we reiterated and expressed the readiness of Iraq for the speedy and smooth resumption of [inspection] activities," said Saeed Hasan, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official and Baghdad's former UN ambassador.

Blix will have a major role in deciding whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein complies with inspection demands.

Security Council members decided to schedule a meeting with Blix tomorrow to discuss the inspections, despite appeals from American diplomats, supported by Britain and Colombia, for more time to prepare a resolution, envoys said.

The inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, just before a US-British bombing blitz designed to punish Baghdad for its alleged failure to co-operate with the monitors.

But the contrasting views that surfaced yesterday at a news conference suggested that Saddam has started to break the broad consensus against him by backing down when faced with the threat of a US attack.

With US Secretary of State Colin Powell on the dais, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said: "From our standpoint, we don't need any special resolution. All of the necessary resolutions are to hand."

Powell countered by saying it was important for the Security Council to act "with tough conditions, tough standards" before inspectors reached Iraq.

"We've seen this game before," Powell said.

Canada backed the US stance, but France tended towards the Russian position. The European Union and the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan took positions midway between the two.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country has the presidency of the European Union, was wary of the Iraqi offer.

"If I were sitting in the Security Council, which I am not, I would in the next days sleep with my eyes wide open and my boots on."

In other developments yesterday:

* There was little confidence in the streets of Baghdad yesterday that Iraq's offer on arms inspectors would herald a new era of peace.

The overwhelming general feeling was that the move may have bought a little time for the international community to put pressure on the US to delay its onslaught, but that it will come sooner or later.

- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT

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