Iraq can be expected to cooperate with United Nations
inspectors without allowing them to find any weapons of mass destruction, a
report says.
The result is that President George Bush will have to decide over the next few months whether
to launch a war against Baghdad without any significant violations in United
Nations Security Council resolution 1441 which led to the return
of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq.
The report by the Brookings Institution said the United States cannot maintain its current military
buildup in the Persian Gulf indefinitely and will have to decide soon
whether to attack Baghdad regardless of international support. It warned
that UN inspectors might require up to six years to find anything that would
constitute a material breach of resolution 1441. Meanwhile, Iraq will
continue to advance its uranium-enrichment program to produce nuclear
weapons, Middle East Newsline reported.
"This means the Bush Administration will have a hard choice to make in
coming weeks: whether to build an international coalition and go to war
without the clear provocation of Iraq blocking the inspections Ñ and in the
midst of a functioning inspections program Ñ or try to make the inspections
work, deferring a decision on war till Iraq makes a major blunder that
provides unequivocal evidence of its duplicity," the Brookings' Saban Center
report said.
The report, authored by former National Security Council official
Kenneth Pollack, said the administration's decision to request a new UN
inspection regime is based on Saddam's refusal to cooperate. Pollack said
Saddam appears capable and willing of defeating the weapons inspection
regime without being cited for any breach of the Security Council
resolution.
Iraq defeated the UN inspection regime in the 1990s and believes it can
do the same this time around. The report said neither the CIA nor other
intelligence agencies are certain where Iraq's WMD arsenal is concealed.
The report dismissed the importance of advanced technologies planned for
deployment by the UN inspection teams. Pollack said some of the
technologies Ñ such as ground penetrating radars Ñ were already tried in
the mid-1990s and did not yield results.
"Without good intelligence leads to point the inspectors in the right
direction, this new technology could turn out to be little more than
expensive baggage," the report said. "It was the lack of such intelligence
that crippled the first inspection regime and thwarted unilateral American
efforts to destroy Iraq's WMD militarily such as during Operation Desert Fox
in 1998."
[On Tuesday, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan rejected a U.S. assertion
that Iraqi anti-aircraft fired toward allied warplanes in northern and
southern Iraq constitutes a material breach of resolution 1441. The allied
patrols are meant to ensure the no-fly zones established by the UN near the
Iraqi
borders with Turkey and Kuwait.]
The report warned that the United States could not sustain its military
buildup in the Persian Gulf for more than a year. It raised the prospect
that another crisis will force the U.S. military to withdraw troops from
Turkey, Kuwait and other allies in the Gulf.
"On the military front alone, if the U.S. does not go to war with Iraq
this winter it will be difficult to sustain the current build-up of forces
in the Persian Gulf for long, perhaps a year at most," the report said.
"Even in that time, other problems requiring the commitment of U.S. forces
might crop up."
The report said the Bush administration must either maintain years of
military and political pressure on Iraq to end its WMD programs. Or, the
administration can begin efforts to build a case for a war against Iraq over
the next few months and lobby other countries to support such an invasion.
A key milestone, the report said, will be Iraq's initial declaration
regarding its WMD programs, scheduled to be relayed to the UN by Dec. 8. The
report said this is the time for the administration to dispute the Iraqi
claim, terminate UN inspections and press for immediate war.
"On the other hand, if the Bush administration allows the inspections to
go forward, it will lose the opportunity to use Baghdad's initial
declaration as a casus belli and if the inspectors fail to find the goods,
as they likely will, the administration's credibility will be thrown in
doubt rather than Saddam's," the report said. "And that will make it all the
more difficult to forge a coalition for war. Absent an unequivocal
provocation from Iraq, proceeding on a war course could then cost the
administration the very diplomatic support it sought to build by taking its
case to the United Nations in the first place."
