UN to Bush: Non, Nyet — Or, at Least, Not Yet

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Concerned that UN arms inspectors might return to Iraq on the basis of current resolutions rather than the tough new ultimatum being sought by the U.S. and Britain, Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday told Jim Lehrer that inspectors would not be sent back until a new Security Council resolution had been adopted. But a UN representative rejected Powell's comment, stressing that the inspectors were answerable only to the Security Council. Privately, however, UN sources have told Time that chief arms inspector Hans Blix would indeed be reluctant to send his team back to Iraq before the Security Council has resolved its differences over the inspectors' precise mandate. It may also be why Blix is using his current talks with Iraqi officials in Vienna to establish whether Iraq would accept an anywhere-anytime inspection regime, which would require rolling back a 1998 agreement between Iraq and the Security Council that put Saddam's presidential palaces and certain government buildings into a separate category of inspection requiring advance notice and chaperoning.

Whose 'No-Fly' Zone is it Anyway?

As diplomatic arm-wrestling continues over whether, when and on what terms UN arms inspectors return to Iraq, the U.S. and Russia have gotten embroiled in a slanging match over the 'no-fly' zones. Moscow accused Washington of undermining efforts to return the inspectors by bombing Iraqi air defense targets over the weekend; Defense Secretary Rumsfeld shot back angrily that coalition pilots were simply defending themselves from Iraqi attack in the course of implementing UN Security Council resolutions. And the fact that such attacks continue, said Rumsfeld, was a sure sign that Iraq had no intention of complying with weapons inspections — he even added the novel spin that aircraft patrolling the 'no-fly' zone were actually performing "aerial inspections."

The famously "forward-leaning" Rumsfeld may be overextending himself a little here: The 'no-fly' zones over northern and southern Iraq are not prescribed in any UN resolutions. They were established by the U.S. and its coalition allies in 1991, as a means of enforcing UN Resolution 688, which requires that Iraqis be protected from repression by Saddam's regime. (At the time, Baghdad had been engaged in the vicious suppression of rebellions by the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south.) And while the arms-inspection system relies in part on aerial surveillance, these flights by U2 spy-planes with fighter escorts are arranged by the UN. Rumsfeld's comments on Monday marked the first attempt to link the 'no-fly' zone to arms inspections.

Saddam, of course, has his own agenda — Iraq has never accepted the 'no-fly' zone and has routinely fired on coalition planes there for most of the past decade, insisting that it is simply exercising its right to defend its sovereign airspace. Saddam's diplomatic game, right now, appears to be to promise cooperation with arms inspectors on existing resolutions, at the same time as vowing to defy any new resolutions and ramping up his challenge to the 'no-fly' zone policy. And that helps both Secretary of State Powell and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld — the former because it helps make the case for a new resolution that gives Iraq no room to evade disarmament, and the latter because it gives the U.S. and Britain a pretext even now for air strikes to disable Saddam's air defense system.

Talkin' 'Bout a Resolution
(September 30, 3pm)

Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix held "businesslike" discussions in Vienna on Monday over renewed arms inspections. But the real drama was elsewhere, at the UN Security Council, where the U.S. and Britain continue to press for a tough new ultimatum to Iraq on disarmament. Washington and London want a new resolution giving Saddam a week to comply, and a month to declare all his weapons of mass destruction, or else face military consequences. Russia and France are balking at the proposal, seeking a return of the inspection regime but without prejudging its outcome. The Russians and French suspect Bush and Blair of seeking a resolution designed to be rejected by Iraq, thereby triggering a war. The combination of their reluctance and U.S.-British insistence points to some form of compromise resolution, which restates the terms for Iraqi disarmament but falls short of anything the Bush administration could construe as an authorization of force at this stage.

Iraq helped the British and Americans over the weekend with tough comments rejecting any new inspection terms, although Baghdad insists that it will comply with existing UN resolutions. One reason for the distinction may be that existing UN Security Council resolutions treat Saddam's presidential palaces as a separate category, requiring advance notice and international chaperoning of inspections. The U.S. and Britain will plainly work hard to close that gap, even in any compromise that emerges from this week's diplomatic wrangling.

The Sharon Signal

Despite the Bush administration's slow progress in securing UN backing, Washington has left Saddam Hussein in no doubt about its intentions. The surest signal came over the weekend in the Bush administration's sharp slapdown of Ariel Sharon: Israel backed off its latest siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound under heavy pressure from the U.S. And the fact that the administration was willing to take the domestically risky step of leaning on Israel one month before the midterm elections can be interpreted as a measure of the seriousness of Washington's search for Arab consent for an attack on Iraq.

Saddam was engaging in his own diplomatic offensive over the weekend, dispatching his foreign minister to Tehran to woo his erstwhile nemesis against the common (American) foe. But Baghdad got little support from Iran, whose foreign minister proclaimed Tehran neutral on the conflict, but warned that it was up to Iraq to avoid a conflict by complying with UN resolutions. Next up, Turkey, where U.S. and Iraqi officials are expected in short order. Turkey's national interests complicate its position, leaving Ankara still seeking guarantees on issues ranging from economic compensation to the fate of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Al Qaeda Link?

Although administration officials have lately begun asserting more forcefully that Iraq has links with al-Qaeda, very little evidence has thus far been offered. Newsweek offers up a story of a young Iraqi who may have been a bin-Laden operative but doesn't suggest he was actually working for the Iraqi government at the same time. And Europeans have been skeptical about the al-Qaeda claims. The Brookings Insitution's Michael O'Hanlon poured scorn on the suggestion of an imminent danger from an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance. Still, the administration is claiming the hot evidence comes from detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere, and it's hard to argue with that. Similarly, however, those skeptical of the administration's efforts to make the case for going to war are unlikely to be convinced by such can't-tell-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you sources.

Another rumor that puts bin Laden and Saddam on the same page, however, is the suggestion by German forensic scientists that Saddam uses body doubles. The range of possibilities opened by this news is too diabolical to discuss. Let's just say we'd better hope that somebody collected a DNA sample back in the ?80s when Saddam was on cozier terms with Washington.

Blair, meanwhile, has managed to come away from a bruising debate on Iraq at his own party's congress with a motion allowing him to go to war if diplomacy fails. But antiwar sentiment remains strong, with over 150,000 people having joined a protest march in London on Saturday. President Bush looks set to get a resolution of support from his own legislature soon, although continuing congressional debate on Iraq suggests the White House may have to accept more limited terms for authorizing military action than it would have liked.