Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might soon allow U.N. weapons inspectors into his palaces, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 4).

Both U.N. and U.S. officials said they believe Iraq will back down and allow inspectors into Hussein’s eight presidential sites.  The United States is attempting to push the U.N. Security Council to pass a new resolution that would allow inspections at “any time and any place” (see GSN, Oct. 3).

There is still an assortment of issues to be worked out before the new resolution is complete, the Post reported (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Oct. 6).

Presidential palaces might soon be available to inspection, and Iraq is willing to work with the United Nations, according to Mohammed al-Douri, Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, speaking on a television news program.

“Certainly we can accommodate ourselves with the U.N. to have free access to presidential sites,” Aldouri said.  “We are not rejecting any resolutions of the Security Council.”

U.S. officials dismissed Iraqi statements as unconvincing.

“Whenever they’re faced with a determined front they start backpedaling,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

In the United States, Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said yesterday that the Senate would pass a resolution giving President George W. Bush broad authority to attack Iraq.  Daschle and other senators, however, are continuing to seek to modify the proposed resolution submitted to Congress by Bush (see GSN, Oct. 3).

“It will pass, and I suspect that there will be a broad bipartisan coalition in support of it,” Daschle said (Strobel/Davis, Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 7).

War Crimes List

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is preparing a list of 13 Iraqi officials whom it hopes to prosecute for a variety of war crimes, the Chicago Tribune reported today.

Hussein heads the list, which also contains six of his family members, including two of his sons.  Ali Hassan Majid, is alleged to have played a large role in the use of chemical weapons that killed Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, is the second person on the list.

Bush plans to further attempt to sway the U.S. Congress to support an attack on Iraq when he addresses the United States on television tonight, the Tribune reported.

“The president will make the point that in great democracies like ours, wars are not the first option and are not rushed into,” an administration official said.  “But if it comes to war, it will be a just cause because Saddam Hussein’s defiance has given the world no choice” (Robin Wright, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 7).

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