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Former UN weapon inspector Charlies Duelfer is quoted in today's Sunday Telegraph as saying: 'The inspectors are supposed to make Iraq give up a capability that it is convinced is essential to its survival. It's taken me seven years to realise that this just ain't going to happen.' (in David Wastell, 'Cheney Woos Arabs on Plan Against Iraq', Sunday Telegraph, 10 March 2002) This is unintentionally revealing. First, he ignores the fact that Iraq did give up most of that capability. Second, he attributes to Iraq the motivation of retaining a capability essential to its survival. Iraqis are very much of the view that chemical weapons are needed to forestall possible conventional defeat by Iran - Western policymakers agreed which is why they didn't care about them or their use (both sides used them in the Iran-Iraq war). And with Israel having the full WMD spectrum and the US bombing it regularly, and more revelations about US nuclear weapons planning, these are further motivations. This is central to explaining why the states of the region are not quaking in their boots at the Iraqi WMD threat. The Iraqi regime is more like Western governments than Blair care to admit - governments which admit a willingness to consider using nuclear weapons for a whole range of contingencies. Most importantly, Duelfer's statement underlines the argument that threatening the survival of the Iraqi leadership undermines the chances for successful arms control. Best wishes Eric ---------------------- Dr. Eric Herring Department of Politics University of Bristol 10 Priory Road Bristol BS8 1TU England, UK Office tel. +44-(0)117-928-8582 Mobile tel. +44-(0)7771-966608 Fax +44-(0)117-973-2133 http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Politics eric.herring@bristol.ac.uk _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk