Blix Report More Damning than Expected, Analysts Say

[Mcleanhatch]

Blix Report More Damning than Expected, Analysts Say
By Lawrence Morahan
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
January 27, 2003

(1st Add: Includes additional background and comments by Amatzia Baram, Kenneth M. Pollack, Charles Pena and Sen. John McCain)

(CNSNews.com) - The much-anticipated report by chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, regarding Iraq's cooperation with inspectors, was more damning and harsher than expected, security analysts told CNSNews.com Monday.

The Iraqis didn't even attempt to comply with Blix's demands of a week ago - to cease intimidation of Iraqi scientists, allow the use of American U2 spy planes and account for missing documents, noted John Hulsman, a research fellow in international relations with the Heritage Foundation.

Blix's report showed the Iraqis "were incredibly unforthcoming," Hulsman said. "I think [Blix] was harsher than I would have imagined, and I think again it's because Iraq hasn't even gone through the motions of compliance."

In his report, Blix said the Iraqis had so far cooperated with the process of the weapons inspections, allowing access to sites, but that Iraq had not cooperated as well on substance.

"Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it," Blix told the U.N. Security Council 60 days after the resumption of U.N. weapons inspections of Iraq.

Analysts said the onus should not be on the United Nations to prove Iraq was or was not in compliance of U.N. resolutions.

"It isn't up to a bunch of inspectors, of whom there is at best 100-plus, to wander the deserts of Iraq, an area the size of the state of California, looking for needles in haystacks. Rather, it's up to the Iraqis to pro-actively show us where those needles are," Hulsman said.

When the U.N. inspectors were kicked out of Iraq in 1998, they sent a report to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan saying they had grave concerns about Saddam Hussein's chemical biological program, Hulsman noted. However, documents submitted by Iraq on this issue "are either insufficient or obviously not correct" about what's going on there, he said.

Blix noted, for example, that Iraqis were unable to account for about 1,000 tons of VX nerve gas.

Hulsman said he was surprised that Iraq had not fabricated evidence of the destruction of these weapons, "and then I'm shocked that they didn't provide this fabricated evidence when Blix asked them again."

Annan said Monday that inspectors should be given more time, in contrast to the Bush administration's contention that inspections have run their course.

Hulsman said the only timetable that's relevant now is the one laid out by the Pentagon for a possible attack on Iraq.

"In the end, I think the timetable that matters isn't anything that Blix lays out, but frankly is the military timetable, which remains pretty steady for sometime in the middle to the end of February," he said.

Robert Maginnis, a military analyst with Fox News and an advisor to the Department of Defense, said Blix's report did not provide any grounds for optimism that war could be avoided.

"I see no hope that the process [of inspections] is going to get to the truth, quite frankly. I know the U.N. wants to remain relevant, but it's clear to me that the intent of Iraq is to obfuscate and to drag the process on as long as it can, hoping to delay any of our actions.

"And certainly, the practices of Saddam Hussein over the years, we know well his denial and deception plan, we know from Iraqi exiles and defectors what has been going on in the last few years, and it's a fairly indicting situation," Maginnis said.

 

[Mcleanhatch]

Weapons Inspectors Try to Prove a Negative

Senior national security analysts from the Brookings Institution said in a conference call with reporters Monday that giving more time to the inspections process, as called for by Annan and others, only plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqis are greatly encouraged by reports of European opposition to war and lack of support for war inside the United States, which appear on the front pages of every newspaper in Iraq, they said.

"They feel that if it takes a few more months...the whole project will be shelved, and there will be no war," said Amatzia Baram, a visiting fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings.

"The moment the pressure is off, they roll back the whole development of allowing more and more access to the United Nations inspectors, and within a few months - once it's clear that war is not imminent - there would be less and less access to private homes, presidential palaces and so on," Baram said.

Even now, the Iraqis have not allowed U2 reconnaissance flights, "and they got away with that one, even though this is a fairly blatant breach of Resolution 1441," he said.

Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, said the longer the inspections go on, the harder it will be for the United States to go to war and the less likely it is that Saddam Hussein will cooperate.

"It is one of the many problems with the constant cries for 'just give the inspectors more time.' The problem is, the more we show willingness to give the inspectors more time, the less likely it is that Saddam is actually going to keep cooperating," Pollack said.

Charles Pena, a senior defense analyst with the Cato Institute, said, however, that Blix's report must be somewhat frustrating for the Bush administration, which has approved the weapons inspections process in principle, even as it prepares for war.

The process might not be working as well as Blix and others might like, but it's certainly not working so poorly that people can claim it's a completely futile process, Pena said.

The administration has walked itself into a box with the whole U.N. process, trying to prove a negative, Pena said.

"Blix can say, this is what we know they had before, and we know how much they've used, so there's x-amount that's unaccounted for. You can suppose that that stuff is still around, but you have no tangible proof," Pena said.

Moreover, the Bush administration should not concern itself so much with whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction but with how Iraq threatens the United States with these weapons, Pena said.

The Pentagon reports that about 12 countries have nuclear weapons programs, 13 have chemical and 16 have biological weapons, Pena said.

"Why aren't we going after all of these countries, too, because I'm sure that many, if not all, of those countries have ties to terrorist groups?" Pena wondered.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) stated that what Blix did not say in his report, despite the ample evidence he provided of Iraqi violations, is that Iraq is in material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441, which states a false weapons disclosure and failure by Iraq to comply and cooperate fully with the terms of the resolution constitute a breach.

"Iraq has failed every test the Security Council has required of it in the name of peace over the course of 17 binding resolutions in the last 12 years," McCain said in a statement. "We should not give Saddam more time to manipulate an inspection regime that can never succeed as long as Iraq refuses to voluntarily disarm.

"As Mr. Blix said, inspections are designed to be a process of verification that provides confidence in Iraqi disarmament. Does anyone, anywhere, sincerely have confidence that Iraq has fully disarmed? Not even our German and French friends have expressed such faint hope," McCain said