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Report calls for inspections backed by military force

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, September 23, 2002

A new report calls for intrusive inspections in Iraq backed by an international military force.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a report that called on the United States to support a tough UN weapons inspection regime as an alternative to a unilateral military campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The report said such an inspection regime must be intrusive and backed by an international military force organized by the Security Council.

The report envisioned the creation of an "Inspection Implementation Force" that would enable UN weapons inspectors to enter any Iraqi facility, Middle East Newsline reported.

The force would be composed principally of air and armored cavalry units, with the addition of forces deployed along the Jordan-Iraq border and an air-mobile brigade in eastern Turkey.

The UN force would deploy at least two brigades in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as an infrastructure to accommodate a corps. The air support would include fighter-jets and bombers and be bolstered by airborne early-warning aircraft. The force would be supported by intelligence provided by satellites and other assets.

"The inspection teams would return to Iraq accompanied by a military arm strong enough to force immediate entry into any site at any time with complete security for the inspection team," the report said. "A credible and continuing military threat involving substantial forces on Iraq's borders will be necessary both to get the inspectors back into Iraq and to enable them to do their job."

The Carnegie report was the result of discussions among leading U.S. strategists on Washington's options to halt Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs. All of the discussants cited in the report rejected unilateral U.S. military action to destroy the Saddam regime and urged the Bush administration to choose a broad-based effort that would win Arab and Iranian support for any campaign against Baghdad.

Strategist Jessica Mathews said in the Carnegie report that coercive UN inspections would prevent the need to deal with such questions as regime change in Baghdad, Iraqi disintegration and the need to deploy tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq for years.

Ms. Mathews said Russia's embrace of the United States after the Al Qaida attacks on New York and Washington last year combined with U.S. threats of unilateral military action have created new opportunities that would enable a tough UN inspections regime.

[Ret.] Air Force Gen. Charles Boyd, another member of the Carnegie team, proposed that Iraqi military movements be severely restricted during UN inspections. This would include a ban on the movement of Iraqi military planes, helicopters as well as ground forces.

"The IIF commander, through established notification procedures, would inform Iraq of the time, duration, and area throughout which Iraqi forces must stand down," Boyd said. "Any violation of that prohibition would constitute a hostile act subjecting the offending Iraqi forces to attack and destruction, as well as the military installations from which they came."

The report called on the administration to be prepared to guarantee that the United States would not launch any war against Iraq as long as the UN inspectors are operating. Such an assurance could be included in any Security Council resolution.

"The objective of removing Saddam's WMD but not Saddam himself must be credible Ñ not only to Saddam but also to those whose support we seek in the region and the Security Council," the report said.

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