An article by Hans von Sponeck, a UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad from 1998 to 2000, was published in the British Guardian on July 22 this year. What he said there is shared by many European, and not only European, politicians and analysts.
According to Sponeck, no acts of terrorism against U.S. facilities abroad or in the U.S. itself are associated with Iraq. The Pentagon and the CIA, he wrote, know pretty well that Iraq today is a threat to no one in the region. They also know, Sponeck went on, that the pharmaceutical center in Daura on the outskirts of Baghdad and a factory which produced pesticides and herbicides in al-Falluja in the Western Desert, that is the facilities suspected of producing germ and chemical weapons, were destroyed during the Gulf War, and the factory in al-Falluja was destroyed for the second time in December 1998 during the Desert Fox operation. In fact the deterring factor is that the U.S. Defense Department has all the information, Sponeck wrote.
A point to note is that it is far from the truth that the U.S. has always hated the present Iraqi regime. The Reagan Administration, for instance, supported the regime of Saddam Hussein and also considered that Iraq balanced out the Islamists that had come to power in Iran. Late in September 2002 Senator Robert Byrd said during the hearings at the Senate military committee that the Americans had provided the Iraqi army with intelligence data on Iranian troops and shipped tanks and other hardware to Saddam.
A return of the UN inspectors to Iraq is the stumbling block. Baghdad asserted that the UN Special Commission had been involved in activities outside its mandate. Incidentally, ever more statements have been made, also by well-informed persons, that Iraq's criticism of the Special Commission is far from groundless. On July 31, 2002, Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekkeus, who headed the group of the UN inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1997, said on Radio Sweden that the U.S. had been trying to influence the work of UN inspectors and pursued "definite interests," including those which did not fall under the mandate of the UN commission in Iraq. In particular the commission collected information about Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, which, according to Ekkeus, can be used during the operation against Iraq. The Swedish diplomat said also that the U.S. attempted to provoke a crisis in the region to set the stage for a direct military attack.
Everything tends to repeat itself in this troubled world, and we learn deplorably few lessons from that. I remember the developments in 1997. At that time I was the Foreign Minister of Russia and took a direct part in the work with the Iraqi leadership. My purpose was to persuade it to allow a return of the UN Special Commission, including U.S. inspectors, and to ensure full compliance with the UN resolutions on inspecting all suspicious facilities without exception. At that time, too, Saddam Hussein interrupted the commission's work and sent it out of the country, accusing it of exceeding its UN mandate. The Special Commission was then headed by Richard Butler, who provoked such assessment by his actions.
But the U.S. supported Butler and one had to reckon with it. The work done by the Special Commission was of special value - it was, in keeping with a UN instruction, to make sure that Iraq manufactured no weapons of mass destruction. We could not risk losing the monitoring of a number of Iraqi facilities - it had to be preserved at all costs. Finally the U.S. at that time, too, got ready for a strike at Iraq and already "cocked the gun." Under Russia's direct influence, Saddam Hussein took the decision to allow the return of the Special Commission back to his country. The foreign ministers of the permanent Security Council member states met for an urgent night session on November 20, 1997, in Geneva (China was represented by its ambassador), and U.S. State Secretary Madeleine Albright asked me: "What have you promised Saddam?" And I said: "We let him know that we would take efforts to change the composition of the Special Commission and outline more clearly the framework of its activities in Iraq. Of course nobody talked with him or with anyone from the Iraqi leadership on behalf of the UN Security Council." This time President Bill Clinton backed down and stopped the already prepared armed attack on Iraq - the world community heaved a sigh of relief.
But in 1998 Baghdad resumed confrontation with the Special Commission. First it suspended its activities and then demanded that it leave Iraq. It was clear that by maneuvering in such a way, or rather by balancing on a razor's edge, Hussein wanted Iraq to be met halfway. At that time and in later instances the chief goal was that economic sanctions be lifted. And the sanctions, according to a UN Security Council resolution, are to be lifted when Iraq complies with the UN demands on eliminating mass destruction weapons and ending all work on their development. Already at that time Iraq insisted on clarity in the question of lifting sanctions, asserting that all the UN demands had been met.
What decision should have been taken at that time and in a similar situation today? Iraq should have been shown in a categorical way that it would have to agree to the work of the UN inspectors on its territory and that any actions against them would be unacceptable for the world community and therefore could not be justified. But parallel with such a tough line it is necessary to eliminate complete vagueness as regards lifting economic sanctions that hit the people of Iraq in the first place rather than its regime.
Two tactics emerged with regard to Iraq, and they are still relevant today. One of them is Russia's line, according to which Iraq should strictly comply with all UN Security Council resolutions on disarmament, while the inspectors should close four disarmament files step by step. I want to stress here that it is not a question of physically closing the files but transferring inspections to a monitoring level. And what is the second stance? I remember my conversation with Richard Butler in Moscow when I still was the Foreign Minister. I asked him if he could say for sure that not a single missile engine and not a single warhead remained in Iraq, and he replied "Yes, I can say it." Then I asked him, "Why then wouldn't you close the missile file?" And he replied, "Come to terms with the United States and we will close it."
Such a cynical attitude of the Special Commission head was backed by the U.S. demand that Iraq should report on all the four aspects at once, that is, with regard to the nuclear, missile, chemical and bacteriological files. But this means that no "light at the end of the tunnel" would be shown to Iraq, that tensions would build up and no constructive way of solving the problems would follow.
The U.S. went its own way. In December 1998 bombs and missiles were used against Iraq. The military operation had been provoked by Butler, who obligingly submitted a one-sided report to the UN Security Council.
As could well have been expected, the strike against Iraq marked no progress in the solution of the acute Iraqi problem. The strike was again followed by a situation which required a return of the UN inspectors to Iraq and the creation of normal conditions for their work in that country. Naturally, the inspectors should make sure that Iraq has complied with the disarmament resolutions of the UN Security Council.
It became clear in the summer of 2002 that Baghdad would not be able to keep opposing the work of inspectors. No doubt, Baghdad's apprehensions that it could become a target of a U.S. military operation played its role. But not only that. The visit to Iraq by Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister A. Saltanov was followed on August 2, 2002 by an invitation to Hans Blix, head of the UN commission on disarmament, control and inspections, to Baghdad to consider a prospect of a possible resumption of international monitoring of the disarmament process in Iraq. It was immediately announced in Moscow that Iraq's proposal was an important move towards solving this problem by political and diplomatic methods "in the framework of implementing the relevant UN Security Council resolutions." A similar opinion was expressed in the office of the UN Secretary General and in the capitals of many states, including NATO members.
As for Washington, it rejected this initiative outright and resumed psychological preparations for military actions against Iraq. The preparations included also anti-Iraqi statements by U.S. top officials and the frequent "leaks" to the press of detailed plans of the military operation. This brainwashing went beyond the limits of pressure on the Iraqi leaders. Most likely it was designed to keep the whole world in suspense and make it get used to the idea that a unilateral U.S. decision to attack Iraq was inevitable.
But evidently Washington "overdid" it - in many cases the campaign produced quite opposite results.
No matter how the situation will develop, at the stage of preparations for the U.S. anti-Iraqi operation the U.S. was not supported, with the exception of the British leadership, by all the other countries, not even by the members of the coalition that was formed during the 1991 Gulf War.
Many Democrats in the U.S. came out against President George Bush's desire to ignore the UN Security Council, which alone can sanction a strike at Iraq.
The response of the European countries, extremely alarmed by the prospect of a unilateral U.S. decision to deal a strike at Iraq, is well known. German Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder spoke categorically against a military operation. French President Jacques Chirac said a unilateral U.S. decision to launch a military operation against Iraq was unacceptable.
In such conditions President George Bush preferred not to ignore, as he had done more than once in words, the need for a UN Security Council decision on using force against Iraq.
At that time Russia and some other countries built up diplomatic pressure on Baghdad to make it agree to a return of the Special Commission. An appropriate appeal was addressed to the Iraqi leadership. And on September 16 the Iraqi leadership notified UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that it was prepared to receive the UN Special Commission unconditionally.
After that the crisis entered a new phase. Left without a direct pretext for a large-scale strike at Iraq, Washington did not calm down. When Baghdad agreed to an unconditional return of the UN inspectors, Washington said it was not satisfied - it was not the work of the Special Commission but Iraq's disarmament that it was after. That was followed by efforts to push a needed resolution through the Security Council, and if that failed, to make a unilateral decision on a military operation against Iraq. To be sure, a good deal now depends on Baghdad, which should not in any way obstruct the work of the Special Commission.
And if, despite everything, a stake on the military solution to the Iraqi problem prevails in the U.S., the U.S. by all indications will be left without the broad international support it has enjoyed since the September 11 events. Difficulties will appear in Russia as well, where public opinion is far from neutral with regard to the use of force by the U.S. against Iraq.
A permanent anti-terrorist war fits into the new U.S. military doctrine, in which the emphasis is made on preventive actions against the enemies that have been conceived by the U.S. itself. President George Bush formulated this "aggressive" principle in a few of his speeches, making no secret of the fact that the U.S. would effectively deal strikes at those countries which, in his view, present a threat to the security of the United States. Such a principle sacrifices international law and the legislation of sovereign states to freely interpreted U.S. security.
It looks like President Bush is right when he attacks Cold- War-style concepts of maintaining stability. Naturally, deterrence and containment cannot be used to ensure peace, stability and security of states on a regional level, that is, where this task is to be accomplished at present. But can one really consider that the U.S Administration offers an optimal formula for maintaining peace and security? Not at all. At least because it is based on a departure from collective actions and asserts the cult of unilateral U.S. decisions. ------------------------------------
The book "The World after September 11" by Yevgeny Primakov will soon be published. The author granted Rossiiskaya Gazeta the right to the exclusive publication of some of its chapters.