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U.S. Fought Surprise Inspections
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 14, 1998; Page A01
The Clinton administration has
intervened secretly for months,
most recently last Friday, to
dissuade United Nations weapons
teams from mounting surprise
inspections in Iraq because it
wished to avoid a new crisis with
the Baghdad government, according
to knowledgeable American and
diplomatic accounts.
The American interventions
included an Aug. 4 telephone call
between Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright and Richard
Butler, executive chairman of the
U.N. Special Commission
responsible for Iraq's disarmament, who spoke on a secure line
from the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain. As a team of specialists stood
poised in Baghdad, according to persons acquainted with the call,
Albright urged Butler to rescind closely held orders for the team to
mount "challenge inspections" at two sites where intelligence leads
suggested they could uncover forbidden weapons components and
documents describing Iraqi efforts to conceal them.
(At the White House today, press secretary Mike McCurry denied
the United States had attempted to stop U.N. inspections).
After a second high-level caution from Washington last Friday,
Butler canceled the special inspection and ordered his team to leave
Baghdad. The disclosure was made yesterday by officials who
regarded the abandoned leads as the most promising in years and
objected to what they described as the American role in squelching
them.
U.S. efforts to forge a go-slow policy in Iraq have coincided with
the announcement by the Baghdad government that it would halt
nearly all cooperation with the U.N. commission, known as
UNSCOM, and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Administration. The two panels are responsible for ridding Iraq of
ballistic missiles and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The behind-the-scenes campaign of caution is at odds with the
Clinton administration's public position as the strongest proponent
of unconditional access for the inspectors to any site in Iraq. Led by
the United States, and backed by American threats of war, the U.N.
Security Council has demanded repeatedly since 1991 -- most
recently in Resolution 1154 on March 2 -- that Iraq give
"immediate, unconditional and unrestricted" cooperation to the
inspection teams. That last resolution, at U.S. insistence, promised
"the severest consequences for Iraq" for further defiance and was
voted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which is
legal grounds for use of military force.
Last week, as Albright reportedly sought to rein in Butler, the
administration was retreating from the vows it made six months
ago to strike immediately and with significant military force if Iraq
failed to honor a Feb. 23 agreement that resolved the last such crisis
over inspections. At that time, administration spokesmen described
a "snap back" policy of automatic military retaliation if Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein violated his agreement with U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Now the administration argues, as White House spokesman P.J.
Crowley said yesterday, that Iraq is proposing "a cat-and-mouse
game" and "we're not going to play." He said the United States
would continue its "encouragement" of Iraq's compliance with its
obligations and would not allow economic sanctions to be lifted
until it does so.
Albright, in a one-sentence statement issued through a spokesman,
said last night: "U.S. policy has been to fully support UNSCOM in
its inspections and I have never told Ambassador Butler how to do
his job." She and those speaking for her declined to answer further
questions about her Aug. 4 "private discussions" with Butler and
would not address specifically whether she had advised him to
cancel the planned raids.
Butler, reached by telephone yesterday, said any suggestion that he
received orders from Albright would be "a very considerable
distortion of what took place." He added, "No member of the
[Security] Council, including the United States, has purported to
give me instructions. They all recognize that their job is policy, my
job is operations."
Asked whether Albright urged him or advised him not to go
forward, Butler said any answer "would be a very slippery slope" in
which "I'd have to tell you what the Russian ambassador said, what
the French ambassador said. Forgive me, but I won't get into that."
Asked to confirm he spoke to Albright last week, he said, "I'm
becoming concerned now about this line of inquiry."
Beginning in June, according to knowledgeable officials, the U.N.
inspectors developed secret plans -- withheld from most members
of their own staff -- for surprise raids at two sites where they
believed they would find evidence of forbidden chemical and
biological weapons and the ballistic missiles capable of deploying
them. The officials declined to describe the sites further, noting that
they are still in operation.
In a little-known practice that all parties are loathe to acknowledge,
Butler dispatched senior lieutenants to London and Washington in
late June to provide highly classified briefings on the intended
inspection "targets," the sources said. Formally, Butler reports
equally to all members of the Security Council and does not give
them advance operational plans. But one official said he
understands "it's suicide to go forward with an inspection like this"
without informing his principal sponsors, the United States and
Britain.
The two governments, according to knowledgeable officials,
acknowledged to Butler's deputies that UNSCOM had the right to
make its own decisions. But they worked in concert in the weeks
that followed to dissuade Butler from going forward with the
inspection plan.
After consultations in Washington, Derek Plumbly, director of the
British Foreign Office's Middle East Command, flew to New York
for a July 15 meeting with Butler. He told the Australian diplomat
in no uncertain terms that the time was not ripe for a provocative
challenge to Iraq, in part because Baghdad was still cooperating,
ostensibly, on a "schedule of work" intended to resolve open
questions, the sources said.
Shortly after that meeting, U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, the
second-ranking delegate to the United Nations, called in Butler for
a consultation in which he raised a long list of U.S. questions and
concerns about the planned raids. Reading from prepared guidance,
he told Butler the decision was UNSCOM's but left the inspection
chief with the plain understanding that the United States did not
support his plan, according to a knowledgeable account of the
meeting.
Butler canceled the raids in July but laid contingency plans to
reschedule them this month after meetings on Aug. 3 and 4 in
Baghdad with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Aziz announced
late on the first day that Iraq would answer no further questions
about its forbidden weapons, asserting that all the answers had long
since been made.
Butler had brought a senior inspection team led by Scott Ritter,
who heads UNSCOM's efforts to penetrate Iraqi
counterintelligence efforts against the inspectors. Included on
Ritter's team, officials said, were language and computer experts,
experts on import and export records, and scientists knowledgeable
about missiles, chemical and biological weapons.
On Aug. 4, Butler notified the U.S. government that he had
authorized Ritter's team to conduct the raids on Aug. 6. That same
day, he got word that Albright wished to speak with him and
traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain for a secure discussion.
Albright argued, according to knowledgeable accounts, that it
would be a big mistake to proceed because the political stage had
not been set in the Security Council.
Butler agreed to a three-day delay, to Aug. 9, in hopes that he could
build broader support for UNSCOM during informal consultations
with the Security Council. But after he briefed the council
governments in New York, he got another high-level American call
on Friday urging him to have the Ritter team stand down. The same
day, he ordered them home.
In a letter to the council Wednesday, Butler said Iraq's new
restrictions "bring to a halt all of the disarmament activities" of his
inspectors. On Tuesday, Mohamed Baradei, director general of the
IAEA, sent a similar letter to the council saying he could no longer
give confident assurance that Iraq is not attempting to reconstitute
its nuclear weapons program.
Both men are awaiting further instruction from the Security
Council, which is scheduled to take up the matter Tuesday.
Yesterday in Baghdad, U.N. special envoy Prakash Shah said he
conveyed a message from Annan that "Iraq should continue its
cooperation" with the weapons inspectors. He announced no results
from what he described as a "cordial" meeting.
) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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