WASHINGTON — After poring over confidential reports and satellite photos, Hans Blix and his team of U.N. inspectors have drawn up a detailed blueprint for use in determining whether Iraq has abandoned its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
More than 50 inspectors would be based in Baghdad, Iraq. No sites would be off limits. Iraqi officials would be required to hand over secret documents about the history of their secret weapons programs.
The inspection plan may be the only way, short of war, for Saddam Hussein and President Bush to resolve their differences over charges that Iraq retains and is still pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
A high-level Iraqi delegation is scheduled to meet with the U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, this month. But many diplomats believe that the surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence is likely to make Iraq less willing to cooperate with the U.N. The theory is Saddam's government will conclude that the United States will find it all but impossible to win Arab backing for an offensive against Iraq, removing the pressure on it to agree to wide-ranging inspections.
However, the Bush administration has signaled that it is determined not to let the tensions in the Middle East deflect it from its ultimate goal of confronting Iraq. The administration's strategy seems to be to demand that Iraq readmit the inspectors, expecting that Iraq will frustrate the request and so give Washington the rationale for a military campaign against Saddam.
"I made up my mind that Saddam Hussein needs to go," Bush told Grenada television this week. "I am confident that we can lead a coalition to pressure Saddam Hussein and to deal with Saddam Hussein."
Yet inspections might be an option.
For Iraq, accepting inspections might be the only way for it to mobilize international support against an American military strike if the Middle East conflict should be defused and Washington repairs its relations with Arab nations. For Washington, it might be the only way to contain Iraq's programs to develop nuclear, biological and chemical arms, as well as the missiles to deliver them, if Middle East politics precludes Arab support for an American strike.
Given the enmity between Washington and Baghdad, however, a final military reckoning seems the more likely option.