Can Inspections Keep Iraq in Check?

By Romesh Ratnesar

For those who oppose U.S. military action against Iraq, U.N. inspections are the preferred alternative for dealing with Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It's an appealing idea--to police rather than attack Iraq--and Bush Administration officials say they haven't rejected it entirely. The U.S. may be willing to support a U.N. Security Council resolution backing the return of inspectors if it includes a credible threat of military action should Saddam refuse to cooperate. And yet many in the Administration are skeptical that inspections can work. Why?

In the first place, uncovering and dismantling the entire store of Saddam's arsenal is an almost impossible task. During the last inspections, Iraqi officials deceived, obstructed and harassed U.N. monitors, who departed in 1998 knowing Iraq had unconventional weapons they hadn't found. Anti-Iraq hawks have little confidence that Hans Blix, current chief of the U.N.'s inspection team, would have any greater success. When Blix ran the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iraq secretly developed nuclear weapons while supposedly under IAEA oversight.

Even if inspectors were somehow freed from Iraqi constraints, hunting weapons is painstaking work. The U.N. says that if allowed to return, its inspection team would need a year to document the full range of Saddam's arsenal. That's too long for Administration hard-liners, who fear that Iraq could use U.N. monitors as shields against a military strike, as Serb forces did during the Balkan wars. There's also the problem of what happens once the inspectors finish their work. There's every reason to believe that, if left in power, Saddam would become more determined to obtain weapons of mass destruction. "Even if the inspectors go back in," says a senior Administration official, "that isn't going to change the policy that we need regime change."

Moderates who support a tougher line against Iraq but oppose a pre-emptive U.S. war are pushing a compromise plan: a new system of "coercive" inspections, under which the U.N. Security Council would call for weapons monitors to return to Iraq backed by a U.S.-led military force that could shoot its way into suspicious facilities or mount an all-out invasion if Iraqi recalcitrance persisted. "It's comply or else," says retired Air Force General Charles Boyd, an advocate of coercive inspections. "We say to Saddam, 'You can submit to unfettered inspections, or you can have an invasion of your country.'"

Administration officials say they're studying the idea. But other Security Council members are wary of arming inspectors. A senior British diplomat says the Iraqi army would probably treat military-backed inspectors as a hostile force. "You can begin an arms spiral," says the official. "Where does it end?" The answer, as in so many scenarios involving Iraq, is war. --By Romesh Ratnesar. With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/Washington and Stewart Stogel/U.N.

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/ Washington and Stewart Stogel/U.N.