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THE ROVING EYE
Iraq: The countdown
begins
By Pepe Escobar
After
considerable haggling, 300 Iraqi opposition delegates
gathered in London, under a US initiative, have released
a political declaration vowing to create a
"parliamentary, pluralist, federal" post-Saddam Hussein
democratic state in Iraq. This ideal future Iraq will be
"de-Baathized": the ruling Baath party will be
extinguished, and Iraq will in theory be a federal state
protecting the rights of all its minorities.
A
so-called committee of 65 sages will guide the
transition. Ahmed al-Bayati, a representative of the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, says
that the committee is composed of 66 percent Arabs (33
percent Shi'ites and the other 33 percent "nationalists
and democrats", whatever that means precisely), 25
percent Kurds, 6 percent Turkmen and 3 percent
Assyrians. A few Islamist parties denounced the Shi'ite
representation as a sham. Baghdad predictably
prophesizes the "traitors" will rot in the dustbin of
history.
This Brave New World version of Iraq,
duly validated by the US, may already be signed and
sealed, but the question is to deliver. According to UN
Resolution 1441, nothing substantial should happen
before January 27, the date when the chiefs of both UN
inspection agencies should come up with their first
official impression on the existence of Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction.
Israel's Defense Ministry
knows very well that Iraq has no nuclear weapons, has
maybe a small chemical weapons cache, and has very few
bacteriological heads, as well as extremely limited
means to deliver them. Anthony Cordesman, an influential
researcher at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, wrote in a September report that
"we don't have any means whatsoever to determine the
lethality of Iraqi biological weapons ... Iraq cannot
test such arms in a massive way ... We will only find
out how dangerous Iraq is when it uses its arms". Or
when it doesn't.
There's a fragile consensus
among diplomats at the UN in New York and also in Geneva
that in theory nothing could happen before January 27 to
force the inspectors to quit Iraq so the country could
be attacked. The key word is fragile.
The road
from here to January 27 is a minefield. On Tuesday,
December 17, the Iraqi declaration was delivered to the
non-permanent members of the Security Council. This is
an edited version, compared to the original (11,807
pages), a reading privilege of the five permanent
Security Council members (US, Russia, China, France and
Britain). Asia Times Online learned from different
sources that this edited version is at least 3,000 pages
shorter than the original. UN inspectors were the
editors of the original text. But the changes were
directed by the Big Five. Their logic rules: recipes to
cook weapons of mass destruction should not fall into
the wrong hands - meaning countries like Syria, Colombia
or Norway.
This Thursday, December 19, UN
inspection mission chief Hans Blix and International
Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed
Al-Baradei deliver to the Security Council their
preliminary analysis of the Iraqi declaration. The world
already knows what America thinks about it. Secretary of
State Colin Powell said "there are problems with the
declaration". The British were "disappointed". The
Americans and British want to know about "holes". They
want to know, for instance, what happened to 500 R-400
bombs filled with biological agents that the UN
inspectors have been trying to locate for 10 years now.
From now on, "holes" (an official American term
referring to the declaration) like these are bound to
deeply divide the Security Council. At the end of this
week comes the word - the American final judgment on the
declaration, after everyone has listened to the careful
preliminary assessment by Hans Blix. But should Iraq be
accused of omitting information, it is still not enough
to accuse Saddam Hussein's regime of "material breach" -
the code name for war. According to Resolution 1441,
what is necessary is one omission plus lack of
cooperation. So in this case, the inspections will
accelerate - the inspectors are already visiting around
10 sites a day - to a situation where the emphasis will
be on verifying bits and pieces of information.
Enter the American-inspired concept of "commando
inspections".
But "commando inspections" will
not be enough without crucial interviews abroad of Iraqi
scientists. Hans Blix has already set a deadline of the
end of December to receive the complete list of Iraqi
scientists who worked or still work in the arms
industry. But he is definitely not convinced that
scientists' defections can be successfully staged - and
that is exactly the reason why he is being so vilified
by large sections of the American media.
That's
where another new idea from Washington pops in: to issue
judicial convocations to the UN. It's one more clever
mechanism to trap Iraq: either Saddam Hussein allows
scientists requested by the UN to leave the country, or
Iraq suffers the consequences.
This coming
Friday is the deadline set again by the US - and nobody
else - to reach an agreement at the UN over the
re-examination of the list of products Iraq has no right
to import without authorization, as part of the
humanitarian "oil for food" program. Asia Times Online
confirmed on the ground months ago how everybody in Iraq
- from ministers and professors to the man in the street
- hates the oil for food program, widely accused of
being an American tool to starve the general population.
This negotiation about the new product list is
absolutely crucial. Last week, the US presented to the
other 14 countries at the Security Council a list of 36
new products that should be prohibited to Iraq. Asia
Times Online has learned that the list contains products
like antibiotics, hydraulic systems, radars to monitor
the weather, flight simulators and small boats. The
official deadline for the list to be reviewed is January
4. UN diplomats say off the record that the express
purpose of this additional list is to weaken Iraq even
more before the almost inevitable war.
Finally,
on January 1, the one-month rotating presidency of the
UN Security Council shifts from Colombia to France. And
this is the key reason why the US is positioning itself
with magnum force before Christmas and New Year: France
will refuse to bow under tremendous pressure, as
Colombia did. But by all means Iraq continues to be
encircled from all sides. Santa Claus is coming to
Washington, but does not seem to be coming to Baghdad.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
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Kurds
vow: '10,000 men in Baghdad' (Dec 17, '02)
Internal
look, imminent war (Dec 12, '02)
Disclosing
the UN spin game (Dec 12, '02)
On
Iraq, Asia waits, watches and wonders (Nov 13,
'02)
At
the UN, a bullet in the 'material
breach' (Nov
8,
'02)
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