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President Bush spent the week in Europe trying to rouse a posse to go after Saddam Hussein, but the response of his NATO allies underscored the centrality of the new round of UN arms inspections underway in Baghdad. The Europeans simply agreed to restate the existing consensus - that Iraq must comply with UN disarmament requirements, or else. That, after all, is the position codified in UN Security Council resolution 1441, which was adopted unanimously two weeks ago. The U.S. has begun sounding out European allies on troop commitments in the event that military action becomes necessary - the responses will vary...
...same breath, U.S. officials made clear they would not claim this as grounds to reconvene the Security Council and demand military action - for the simple reason that most Council members don't share the U.S. interpretation, because the "no-fly zones" are not specifically mandated by any UN resolution. Of course, if one of Saddam's ack-ack gunners succeeds - improbably, after more than five years of trying - in shooting down a coalition plane, the Iraqi leader is in real trouble. The legal niceties of the status of the "no-fly" zone might evaporate quickly in the face...
...Blix's three-day visit to Baghdad was not an inspection mission but a diplomatic one. Blix, as head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), and Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, held a preliminary meeting with Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. Then they had two rounds of talks with Saddam's point man, Lt. Gen. Amer Saadi, a British-educated engineer who once headed Iraq's weapons programs...
...Iraqi officials, United Nations weapons inspectors are really nothing more than spies. When Saddam's government accepted the UN resolution that enabled their return, Foreign Minister Sabri's letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced the U.S. as "the tyrant of the age" whose allegations against Iraq amounted to "wicked slander...
...world will soon know whether Saddam's government truly intends to permit UN weapons inspections "anywhere, any place, any time," as Blix describes his mandate from the Security Council. But judging from the constructive posture assumed by the Iraqis in this week's meetings in Baghdad, they seem to be taking seriously Resolution 1441's warning that Blix's mission offers Iraq a "final" chance to disarm, or face serious consequences...