In Baghdad, however, the diplomatic situation was muddled. Saddam’s henchmen graciously offered to allow U.N. officials to inspect Saddam’s palaces, where they suspect he has hidden WMD technology; indeed, the dignitaries could even stay a month. But, the Iraqi spokesmen quickly added, the visitors could not be arms inspectors. Thanks, but no thanks, answered UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission set up to keep Saddam from building weapons of mass destruction.
Is there no line in the sand? Your average CNN viewer was waiting for the moment last week when U.N. inspectors would knock on the palace door, and Saddam would have to open up–or face war. But the confrontation will not play out so quickly or neatly. Part of the reason is the character of the main players. Saddam’s practice has been to bluff hard–but then pull back at the last moment. Of course, he miscalculated in 1991 and wound up the target of the biggest sustained air and ground campaign since Vietnam. Clinton prefers to stay loose and slip out of final showdowns. Add in the machinations of unreliable and suspicious allies, and the outlook becomes even murkier. But it is possible to map out at least a short-term scenario, and to predict where it may lead if the different sides once more reach the brink.
By kicking U.S. inspectors out of Iraq in early November, Saddam won three weeks to hide his biological and chemical weapons, and to brew some more. It will take the 75 UNSCOM officials at least another week to catch up–to visit the 50 or so key facilities–vaccine plants, breweries, pharmaceutical makers, dairies–that Saddam, in the absence of UNSCOM, could have switched to making biological or chemical agents. Only when UNSCOM has in effect retraced its steps will it ask to see new sites that have been off limits–like Saddam’s scores of palaces and the headquarters of his secret police and elite special Republic Guards.
Meanwhile, The New York Times raised alarms by speculating that Russian U.N. inspectors were secretly tipping off their Iraqi hosts before the teams arrived for surprise inspections. There may be some moles in UNSCOM–but if so, they haven’t been able to give the Iraqis much in the way of advance warning. Saddam’s scientists have scrambled out the back door as the inspectors were coming in the front.
Such cat-and-mouse games could go on for weeks before UNSCOM forces another confrontation. The United States is in no great rush. State Department sources tell NEWSWEEK that Washington needs six to eight weeks to put together a coalition for military action. Some in the administration were miffed at Cohen for his hawkish remarks. They fear he is building popular momentum for a military response before the old gulf-war coalition is ready to strike.
The key to this shaky alliance is the Arab states. Strikes from carrier-based F/A-18s or from sea-launched cruise missiles would be ““pinpricks.’’ To really hurt Saddam would take a sustained bombing campaign by hundreds of U.S. bombers, including B-1s and B-52s, F-16s and F-15s and F-117 stealth strike aircraft, all of which require airfields. State and Defense officials insist that Kuwait and Bahrain and–possibly–Saudi Arabia were willing to make bases available when the latest crisis erupted in mid-November. But since then these Arab governments have been ““listening to the street,’’ says one senior State Department official–and are apparently less eager to host U.S. warplanes. Saddam is seen by many ordinary Arabs as a potential martyr to the Great Satan. Arab leaders for the most part would like to see Saddam dead–or left alone. They will have to be pushed and cajoled to go along with bombing strikes that hurt Saddam without killing him.
If Saddam tries to shoot down an American U-2 or any other plane patrolling the ““no-fly’’ zones over southern and northern Iraq, all bets are off. More likely, the real test will come in a month or two, when Richard Butler, the veteran Australian diplomat who heads UNSCOM, goes to Iraq for a meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. This will be the moment when Butler, a tough-minded negotiator, demands to see Saddam’s off-limits palaces and headquarters.
Saddam may finally fold. Or, more likely, he will try to drive a wedge through the U.N. coalition to buy yet more time. Russia, France and the Arabs all believe it is more effective to buy Saddam off by offering him an end to the oil sanctions that have squeezed his country for the last seven years. Nonetheless, the Iraqi strongman may have inadvertently strengthened the anti-Saddam coalition in the latest showdown. The U.N. Security Council is on the spot. If it fails to enforce U.N. resolutions that clearly call for Saddam to give UNSCOM a free hand to look for weapons of mass destruction, the whole idea of collective security will be at risk. In that case, the Council would probably vote to use force, with Russia probably abstaining.
Even such a vote would not guarantee war. There would be more public posturing and more backstairs maneuvering before the bombs began to fall. But as one senior administration official emphasized to NEWSWEEK, the American force in the gulf–more than 200 planes and 20 warships–is going to stay a while.
