December 18, 2002	Wednesday	Shawwal 13, 1423

BAGHDAD: Iraq is swallowing its pride in a desperate bid to avert a war it knows it can’t win — or at least to make such a war look unjust in the eyes of the world.

President Saddam Hussein is letting UN inspectors trample wherever they please in a hunt for doomsday weapons that were once at the heart of his own aspirations for regional power.

With US President George W. Bush threatening to remove him by force if he does not disarm, Saddam is determined to deprive Washington of any obvious pretext to invade.

Iraqi officials say they are under no illusions that a devastating US attack can be avoided. At best they hope to defer it and persuade the world that Iraq is a victim of aggression by a cruel enemy bent on global hegemony.

“The situation is unfolding. The whole public opinion will see how Iraq is wise, Iraq is truthful,” Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rasheed said.

“It has absolutely no weapons of mass destruction. It will cooperate fully with the inspectors to prove this fact and to show that the Americans and British are liars,” he said.

Washington and London are already trumpeting their belief that a huge Iraqi arms dossier given to the United Nations on Dec 8 is full of holes, even before UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix delivers a preliminary verdict on Thursday.

Many nations, including close US allies, want the UN experts to be given ample time to test Iraq’s claim that it is free of banned weapons. There is no guarantee they will get it.

MINEFIELDS AHEAD: “Iraq is trying to show goodwill,” said one European diplomat, citing Baghdad’s assent to the return of the inspectors after a four-year gap and recent gestures towards wary neighbours such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

But Saddam’s chosen course is strewn with minefields.

The inspectors, armed with unprecedented powers by last month’s UN Security Council resolution 1441, are less than three weeks into their fateful new mission.

So far, they have reported nothing untoward. Iraqi officials have expressed relief at the way they are working. They made no bleats when inspectors picked through cupboards and refrigerators in one of Saddam’s sumptuous palaces.

But Baghdad’s patience may be tested as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission intensify and expand their quest.

Inspectors currently drive to suspect sites. Soon they will be able to swoop on them by helicopter. Resolution 1441 gives them the right to use fixed-wing and unmanned aircraft, too.

Blix has ordered Iraq to produce a list of scientists linked to its arms programmes by the end of the month. If the inspectors demand to interview any of them outside Iraq, as authorised by 1441, this might jangle Iraqi nerves.

The United States and Britain are also ratcheting up air strikes in a southern “no-fly” zone not recognised by Iraq or enshrined in any Security Council resolution.

Formidable US forces have been gathering in the Gulf, though Washington insists it has taken no decision to use them.

DEADLY GAME: Is all this a show of muscle designed to cow Iraq into submission or part of an inexorable countdown to war?

The jury is still out, but Iraq sees its best defence as eroding world support for a US-led attack by welcoming the inspectors and pursuing a diplomatic charm offensive.

Humility does not come easily to the Iraqi leadership and its prickliness can still surface. Last week it snubbed Russia by scrapping a huge oil contract, while a recent “apology” to Kuwait for the 1990 invasion was regarded by the Gulf emirate as insulting and subversive.—Reuters