Updates from AIJAC

A New UN Resolution on Iraq

September 30, 2002
Number 09/02 #12

Today, Updates looks at what needs to be considered in crafting a new UN resolution on Iraq, as proposed by the US and UK. Patrick Clawson looks at the history and the unsatisfactory current regime and stresses that inspections cannot be a goal in themselves.

Next, Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton White House official specialising in Iraq, writing in the New York Times, argues that there is much evidence Saddam cannot be deterred, and therefore achieving disarmament quickly, by force or via diplomacy, is essential.

And Richard Spertzel, UNSCOM's former chief inspector for biological weapons in Iraq, argues that without a clear change of attitude by the Iraqi regime, inspections are futile, and given the imminent terrorism danger, just getting inspectors in is not enough.

POLICYWATCH #664 September 27, 2002

ANALYSIS OF NEAR EAST POLICY FROM THE SCHOLARS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE

SHAPING A NEW UN DRAFT RESOLUTION ON IRAQ

By Patrick Clawson

The United States and Britain are consulting with the other three permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia, France, and China) before introducing a new draft resolution on Iraq. Much attention has been given to whether the resolution will explicitly authorise the use of force. At least as important will be whether the resolution reverses the long, slow erosion of Iraq's UN-mandated obligations. For all their seemingly tough language, recent Security Council resolutions on Iraq have been ambiguous at best about the issues on which Saddam Hussein has been allowed to cheat in the past.

Disarmament Is the Objective, Not Inspections

For all the focus on the return of UN inspectors, the original objective of UN action on Iraq should remain paramount -- that is, elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Inspections are a means to this end, not an end in themselves. Those involved in the Iraq debate often lose sight of this basic fact.

The original 1991 ceasefire accord, set out in UN Resolution 687, presented inspections as one element in a process, and not necessarily the central element. At least as important was Iraq's "full, final, and complete disclosure"(FFCD) of WMD activities, which Baghdad had to present within fifteen days. The job of the UN inspectors was to verify this disclosure, observe the destruction of Iraq's military WMD programs, and initiate monitoring of dual-use programs. Yet, the ceasefire resolution did not envisage that inspectors would have to chase all over a country larger than California in order to find where WMD programs were hidden, a near-impossible task. Moreover, Iraq has never provided a true FFCD. It has submitted as many as nine FFCDs, each of which is a "far from complete disclosure," in the bitter words of former inspectors. The problems caused by incomplete Iraqi disclosures were documented by a panel of arms- control experts appointed in 1999 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; few of these experts hailed from countries that were close allies of the United States or Britain, and the panel was chaired by Brazil's UN ambassador Celso Amorim.

Any new resolution on Iraq should demand that Baghdad provide a credible FFCD, as required in the 1991 ceasefire resolution. Indeed, there would be little point in conducting inspections before Iraq has come clean. The burden of proof should not be on the inspectors to ferret out what Iraq has hidden; the burden should be on Iraq to explain discrepancies in its WMD disclosures. When Iraq expelled the inspectors in 1998, they had been unable to account for approximately forty-five chemical and biological missile warheads, thousands of chemical artillery shells, and more than a ton of bacterial growth media for biological weapons (460 kilograms of casein and 80 kilograms of thiolglycollate, both suitable for botulinum toxin; 520 kilograms of yeast extract, suitable for anthrax; and 1,100 kilograms of peptone, suitable for perfringens). In addition, Iraq has failed to account for various missile components, nor has it addressed questions concerning its reconstruction efforts at WMD facilities since 1998 (which are clearly discernible in satellite photos).

Requiring Baghdad to submit an FFCD within fifteen days -- the timetable set out in the 1991 ceasefire resolution -- would provide an early test of whether Iraq is in fact willing to give up its WMD. Since Saddam's game is to delay until the world loses interest, and since Iraq has a long history of making promises it does not keep, the Security Council should force such an early test. Unfortunately, the procedure set out in the more recent Resolution 1284 (drafted in 1999) slows the inspections process to the usual leisurely UN pace, with sixty days needed just to produce a work program for the inspectors. Under such a procedure, Saddam could claim that he was fulfilling his obligations for quite some time before inspectors were able to determine whether Iraq was actually going to permit unfettered inspections. Returning to the original FFCD requirements placed on Iraq in 1991 would bypass the long delays built into the subsequent, weaker resolutions. In short, offering a new resolution that restates Baghdad's obligation to provide a "full, final, and complete disclosure" would be a key indicator of the Security Council's desire to reverse the erosion of the disarmament process.

Clarifying Ambiguities about Inspections

Security Council Resolution 1284, which established the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), is ambiguous, even inconsistent, as Russia has been arguing for the past two years (of course, Russia wants to resolve the ambiguities by reducing rather than increasing Saddam's obligations). The resolution promises everything to everybody. Take the contentious issue of access to what Iraq calls "presidential and sovereign sites," which cover 25 square miles in total. Under a 1998 memorandum of understanding between Saddam and Annan, such sites can be visited only with ample advance notice, with diplomats as observers and with tight restrictions on what visitors could do and where they could go. Such conditions would seem to be in obvious contradiction to 1284's stipulation that "Iraq shall allow UNMOVIC teams immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to all areas, facilities, equipment, records, and means of transport which they wish to inspect." But UNMOVIC director Hans Blix has argued that the 1998 memorandum is still in effect. As a result, Saddam can claim that he will allow inspectors to go anywhere, when he actually means that he will allow them to go anywhere under the restrictions established in the past -- a half-step at best. Hence, a key issue in the forthcoming draft resolution will be whether it clarifies the status of the 1998 Annan-Saddam memorandum.

Past failures to confront Saddam over his half-measures augur ill for the future. He can be expected to engage in more gambits similar to his recent announcement that inspectors may return. The more pressure he is under, the more Saddam will offer up in order to forestall military action. When his son-in-law Hussein Kamal defected in 1995, Iraqi officials panicked, since he had been in charge of the regime's WMD programs. Saddam himself was shocked to discover that Kamal had hidden reams of fascinating documents on his chicken farm concerning previously unknown chemical and biological weapons programs. Yet, the existence of such programs means that Saddam has many more tricks to pull in the event of an imminent U.S. attack. For example, he could offer up one of these previously unknown programs to UN inspectors; after all, his strategy has long been to have several programs proceeding simultaneously on parallel tracks, so sacrificing one of them could allow him to preserve other, more valuable ones. Alternatively, Saddam could surrender tons of seemingly relevant documents to UNMOVIC, which would take years to translate and digest.

Some may be tempted to dismiss the debate about drafting a new Security Council resolution, arguing that Saddam has already committed sufficient violations of existing resolutions to justify military force. But it would be a mistake to be so categorical, because the Security Council debate offers an opportunity to remind the world about the degree to which Saddam has mocked the UN's authority. The United States would do well to keep hammering away at the basic demand of the 1991 ceasefire resolution: Iraq's full, final, and complete disclosure of all WMD activities. Until that is provided, Iraq should be regarded as being in material breach of the ceasefire.

Patrick Clawson is deputy director of The Washington Institute.

Copyright 2002 THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE for Near East Policy 1828 L Street Suite 1050 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 452-0650 FAX (202) 223-5364 E-Mail: info@washingtoninstitute.org

New York Times, September 26, 2002

Why Iraq Can't Be Deterred

By KENNETH M. POLLACK

WASHINGTON ‹ As the United States moves closer to war with Iraq, some have suggested relying instead on deterrence to deal with the threat Saddam Hussein poses. Those who favour deterrence acknowledge that the containment regime that constrained Iraq during the 1990's has frayed beyond repair, but argue that Mr. Hussein can still be kept in check by American threats to respond to any new Iraqi aggression with force ‹ including nuclear bombardment, if necessary.

Certainly war should be a last resort, and deterrence is a seemingly reasonable alternative; after all, it worked with the Soviet Union for 45 years. Unfortunately, however, those who seek to apply it to Iraq base their views on a dangerous misreading of Mr. Hussein, and so fail to recognize how risky such a course is likely to be.

Proponents of deterrence argue that Mr. Hussein will not engage in new aggression, even after he has acquired nuclear weapons, because he is not deliberately suicidal and so would not risk an American nuclear response.

But what they overlook is that Mr. Hussein is often unintentionally suicidal ‹ that is, he miscalculates his odds of success and frequently ignores the likelihood of catastrophic failure. Mr. Hussein is a risk-taker who plays dangerous games without realising how dangerous they truly are. He is deeply ignorant of the outside world and surrounded by sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

When Yevgeny M. Primakov, a Soviet envoy, went to Baghdad in 1991 to try to warn Mr. Hussein to withdraw, he was amazed to find out how cut off from reality Mr. Hussein was. "I realised that it was possible Saddam did not have complete information," he later wrote. "He gave priority to positive reports . . . and as for bad news, the bearer could pay a high price." These factors make Mr. Hussein difficult to deter, because his calculations are based on ideas that do not necessarily correspond to reality and are often impervious to outside influences.

In 1974, for example, he attacked the Kurds even though Iran had been arming and supporting them (with American and Israeli support). He believed, for reasons unknown, that Iran would do nothing to help its proxies. The shah responded decisively, sending troops into Iraqi Kurdistan, mobilising his army and provoking clashes along the border. To stave off an Iranian invasion that he feared would end his regime, Mr. Hussein was forced to sign the humiliating Algiers accord, which gave Iran everything it wanted from Iraq, including contested territory.

This pattern has been repeated many times since, and it is fair to say that Mr. Hussein's continued survival is far more attributable to luck than it is to any prudence on his part. Thus in 1980 he attacked Iran under the misguided assumption that the new Islamic Republic was so unpopular that it would collapse after one good shove. In so doing, he embroiled Iraq in a war that nearly destroyed his own regime.

In 1991, rather than withdrawing from Kuwait and heading off a war, he convinced himself that the American-led coalition would not attack and that even if it did, his army would emerge victorious. By confidently pursuing this path he again nearly destroyed himself and his regime.

The best evidence that Mr. Hussein can be deterred comes from the Persian Gulf war, when he refrained from using weapons of mass destruction because of American and Israeli threats of nuclear retaliation. But a closer look at the evidence provides more ominous lessons.

When Secretary of State James Baker met with Tariq Aziz in Geneva on the eve of the war, the letter he presented from President Bush to Mr. Hussein threatened the "severest consequences" if Iraq took any of three actions: use of weapons of mass destruction, destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields or terrorist action against the United States.

The first point to make is that this did not stop Mr. Hussein from destroying the oil fields or dispatching hit squads to the United States, so the notion that he is easily deterred is dubious. Mr. Hussein did not use chemical munitions against coalition ground forces because he initially believed that he did not need them to prevail. Nevertheless, he did keep stockpiles farther back from the front, suggesting he planned to use them if the battle did not go as he expected. Whether he would have used these weapons is an open question, because the coalition ground advance was so rapid that Iraq's forces never had a chance to deploy them.

A better case can be made that Mr. Hussein was deterred from launching Scud missiles tipped with chemical or biological agents at Israel for fear that the Israelis would retaliate with nuclear weapons, but even here the evidence is hardly perfect. After the war, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that the Iraqi engineers knew that their warheads were awful and probably would have done little damage. For this reason, Mr. Hussein might have considered the conventionally armed Scuds to be the most potent arrows in his quiver.

After the gulf war, moreover, United Nations inspectors and Iraqi defectors revealed a set of secret plans and orders, issued by Mr. Hussein, that are disturbing at best. First, he had set up a special Scud unit with both chemical and biological warheads that was ordered to launch its missiles against Israel in the event of a nuclear attack or a coalition march on Baghdad. Since no one outside Iraq knew at the time about this unit and its orders, it was clearly intended not as a deterrent but simply as a force for revenge.

Second, in August 1990 ‹ after he realised that the United States might challenge the invasion of Kuwait ‹ Mr. Hussein ordered a crash program to build one nuclear weapon, which came close to succeeding. (It failed only because the Iraqis could not enrich enough uranium in time.) His former chief bombmaker has said that Mr. Hussein intended to launch the bomb as a revenge weapon at Tel Aviv if his regime started to collapse. His former chief of intelligence has said that he believes that Mr. Hussein wanted to build a nuclear weapon in order to deter the United States from launching Desert Storm.

Third, Iraqi defectors and other sources report that Mr. Hussein told aides after the war that his greatest mistake was to invade Kuwait before he had a nuclear weapon, because then the United States would never have dared to oppose him.

What all this suggests is that if Saddam Hussein is able to acquire nuclear weapons, he will see them as tools to achieve his goals ‹ to dominate the Arab world, destroy Israel and punish America. He might not launch such weapons immediately in pursuit of these aims, but that is cold comfort. There is every reason to believe that he would brandish them to deter the United States from interfering in his efforts to conquer or blackmail neighboring countries.

With 1990's-style containment fading quickly and unlikely to be revived, both of the remaining Iraq policy options ‹ invasion and deterrence ‹ carry serious costs and risks. But a well-planned invasion, one that mustered overwhelming force and the support of key allies, could keep those risks to a minimum.

On the other hand, staking our hopes on a policy of deterrence would cost little now (except a loss of face), but it would run the much greater risk of postponing the day of reckoning to a time of Iraq's choosing. Given Mr. Hussein's history of catastrophic miscalculations and his faith that nuclear weapons can deter not him but us, there is every reason to believe that the question is not one of war or no war, but rather war now or war later ‹ a war without nuclear weapons or a war with them.

Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst of the Iraqi military, is director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."

BAGHDAD'S OLD TRICKS

Iraq's Faux Capitulation

A former weapons inspector explains why Saddam is still a menace.

BY RICHARD O. SPERTZEL

Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2002

When Iraq announced last week that it would allow inspectors to return without conditions, many diplomats and the press jumped with glee. At last, Iraq, responding to pressure, had a miraculous change of heart. China, Russia, France and many Arab nations quickly asserted that no new Security Council resolution would be necessary. All studiously ignored the statement's fine print, which was reinforced in the lengthy, more formal notification to the United Nations later in the week.

Iraq stipulated that inspectors had to respect the country's dignity, sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also stipulated that the U.N. had to apply the rules governing elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to Israel as well. If that wasn't enough condition-setting, Saddam Hussein then came back to add that all conditions previously negotiated with the U.N. had to apply, notably the hamstringing agreement by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that called for prior notification and accompaniment of inspectors by diplomats to "sensitive" sites. This is progress? Given 24 hours notification, any country could hide even "smoking gun" evidence of a biological weapons program. Such inspections are designed for failure.

>From its inception in the 1970s, Iraq's biological weapons program included both military and terrorist applications, the latter part of which were not actively pursued by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors. The biological weapons program, founded and funded by Iraq's intelligence service with some limited technical input from the Ministry of Defense, has remained under the intelligence agency's control since 1987.

The existence of the biological weapons program was categorically denied and actively concealed from UNSCOM until July 1995. And the pattern of denial and concealment continued right through the termination of inspections by Iraq in December 1998. Fraudulent statements, false and forged documents, misrepresentation of the roles of people and facilities, and other acts of deception were the norm. The extent and objectives of Iraq's biological weapons program have never been disclosed.

Iraq's multiple so-called "Full, Final, and Complete Declarations" that it had disclosed everything about its prohibited biological weapons program have never been accurate or complete. Nothing appears to have changed Iraq's willingness to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. Nor does it appear, in spite of the lip service given to getting inspectors back into Iraq, that there has been any significant change in the support that an inspection regime might expect from U.N. Security Council members. The existing resolutions also existed in 1997 and 1998 and failed to get Iraq's full cooperation, in part thanks to Russia's and France's support for whatever Iraq wanted.

Even while UNSCOM inspectors were still operating, Iraq was constantly trying to restrict our activities, curb our access and require notification of inspections, even to monitored sites. What, in Iraq's latest pronouncement regarding the return of inspectors, makes countries such as France and Russia believe that there is no need for a stronger resolution with discrete dates for Iraq to accomplish a true disarmament and specific action for failure to comply? None of this should reflect negatively on the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the successor to UNSCOM. Its success or failure depends too much on uncontrollable elements. What will be the conditions under which the inspectors return? Iraq wants to retain all the obstacles that it had wrangled out of the U.N. through the series of "crises" that it had instigated during UNSCOM's tenure--a clear obstacle to success.

What support will the inspection regime have, given Iraq's recalcitrance and what appears to be a lack of strong, unanimous support in the Security Council? Will Iraq truly cooperate and reveal or destroy all its biological weapons activity? Will it, on readmitting inspectors, behave differently this time? Based on the findings of broad panels of international experts including representatives of all Security Council members, a first indication of cooperation could be a significant further verifiable disclosure by Iraq in all weapons of mass destruction areas. Iraq's continued denial of possession of any weapons of mass destruction may be semantic hairsplitting: no weapons, but what about programs to produce them? It will take a shift in the attitude of the Iraqi ruling regime before any elimination of weapons of mass destruction programs will be possible. The current charade being carried out on the U.N. stage by Iraq and its surrogates reflects no desire for true disarmament but only steps to lifting sanctions. How this change in attitude comes about may tell much about the U.N.'s effectiveness and its future relevance.

Should Iraq be allowed to retain its biological weapons (and other weapons of mass destruction programs) it will remain a menace not only to its neighbours, but to the world at large because of the concomitant instability it would create in the region. The Gulf states would need to judge all their actions in light of the Iraqi threat. Saddam's regime is unpredictable. It is already openly supplying support to Palestinian suicide bombers. Iraq might try using weapons of mass destruction against Israel, with who knows what repercussions.

The world's press in recent weeks has cited the opposition of most nations in the Middle East and Europe to any action against Iraq. It is claimed that Iraq is weaker than it was a decade ago, and does not pose any immediate and significant threat. But this does not seem to address the terrorist threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. One would think that after Sept. 11, a more realistic appraisal of Iraq's capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction as terrorist weapons would be forthcoming. Iraq's biological weapons program from its inception included a terrorist component. Such terrorism applications would undoubtedly evolve to meet changing situations and can be expected to be retained even after the development of its nuclear capability.

The threat that Iraq's biological weapons program poses as a bioterrorist weapon to any of its perceived enemies is enormous. While much attention is focused on bioterrorism against people, the economic devastation that could be wreaked on agriculture could be far greater in the long term. For the U.S. at home and abroad, the greatest danger from Iraq's weapons development remains the potential for its use in terrorism, whether by Iraq directly or through support to terrorist organizations.

How certain are we that the weapons-grade anthrax spores contained in the letters sent to various U.S. addresses last October were not "Made in Baghdad"? Should Iraq be involved with using its biological weapons expertise in bioterrorist activities, it may be impossible to find a "smoking gun." Biological weapons agents are unlikely to have a signature that will definitively pinpoint a laboratory or a country as the origin. As long as Iraq does not change its attitude, as long as it continues trying to acquire and retaining weapons of mass destruction, its support for terrorism is a major threat to the world. Too bad that the diplomats are unable or unwilling to recognize this danger.

Mr. Spertzel was the United Nations' chief biological weapons inspector in Iraq from 1994 to 1998.

Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.