LONDON: With a looming deadline to declare all its doomsday arsenal, Iraq could defer war by disclosing enough to keep UN experts busy for weeks, if not months.
Iraq says it will submit the declaration to the United Nations on Dec 7, a day ahead of the date set in Security Council resolution 1441 with unspecified “new elements”.
Analysts said the document may stick stubbornly to past denials that Iraq still has any hidden chemical, biological, nuclear or ballistic missile programmes or material.
But it would be smarter for President Saddam Hussein, whose survival is at stake, to slip in some genuine revelations.
These would not convince the United States or Britain that he had come clean, but could lend weight to arguments that UN inspections must be given more time, the analysts said.
“The clever thing would be to throw in a few things he is reasonably sure we don’t know about,” said Steven Simon, deputy director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. “This would create an impression of Iraqi cooperation and make problems for the US and Britain in the Security Council.
A British official said Iraq might “obfuscate with a long, detailed declaration, admitting some things and denying others, to give the inspectors enough to keep them going for a while”.
“NEW ELEMENTS”: Hussam Mohammed Amin, the Iraqi official liaising with UN arms teams, said on Tuesday the list would have new elements, but not “necessarily” any admission that Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He again denied that it possessed any.
The United States, Britain, France, Russia and perhaps others will want to analyse the document, comparing it to their own intelligence reports and the findings of UN inspectors.
The 15-nation Security Council will want to hear the views of the UN inspection teams before delivering any judgment.
US RESPONSE: Mustafa Alani, a London-based Iraqi analyst, said he expected the Americans to issue a “counter-document” based on intelligence sources to challenge the veracity of Iraq’s list.
“I think the American document will convince US public opinion and that may be enough for Bush,” Alani said.
While not yet ready for immediate military action, the US would not wait too long if other Security Council members contested its view on whether the Iraqi list by itself was a “material breach” justifying war, he added.
But British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament last week that his country would need other evidence of Iraqi non-compliance, verified by the inspectors, before declaring that Saddam had blown his final chance.
Iraq’s critics want it to document three areas: WMD material that UNSCOM, the previous UN inspection body, could not trace before its teams withdrew in 1998; any WMD programmes activated during the inspectors’ four-year absence from Iraq; and dual use items, with possible military as well as civilian purposes.
Alani said Iraq would probably list dual use items, and maybe declare some of the WMD material previously unaccounted for.
Saddam has little incentive to relinquish any banned weapons he still has if he is convinced that the US is bent on removing him by force, with or without UN approval.—Reuters
