Iraq:  Hussein Suggests Willingness to Accept Inspections

With the building threat of a U.S. attack on Iraq, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein told a British parliamentarian Thursday that he is ready to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return.

After three years of pressure from the United Nations, the United Kingdom and the United States, Hussein made the offer to Member of Parliament George Galloway in a personal interview in a bunker at a secret location in or near Baghdad.  Galloway said Hussein’s offer should remove any justification for attacking Iraq.

“Saddam said he would accept all the U.N. resolutions and these resolutions include unfettered access,” said Galloway, who nevertheless conceded that “unfettered’ was not a term Hussein mentioned.  “He did not explicitly say that, but by accepting the resolutions you are accepting these words,” Galloway said.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office, however, said yesterday, “This changes nothing.  It tells us nothing new.  Saddam knows what he has to do and this is comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

Hussein’s offer may nevertheless divide the international community, according to the Guardian, since British policy is aimed returning weapons inspectors while U.S. policy leans in the direction of a complete regime change (Ewen MacAskill, London Guardian, Aug. 12).

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney told Iraqi opposition leaders Saturday that the Bush administration is determined to oust Hussein from power and replace him with a democratic government, the New York Times reported.  Both Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld emphasized that the new Iraqi government would be democratic, suggesting that plans are in the works to depose not just Hussein, but Iraq’s entire ruling structure.

“The main message was that the U.S. is seriously committed to regime change in Iraq,” said al-Sharif Ali bin Hussein, one of the opposition leaders.  “They support a democratic regime in Iraq.  They would not support replacing one dictator with another,” he added.

Although the Bush administration has not announced a timetable for military intervention in Iraq, the Times reported that talks between Iraqi opposition leaders and the Bush administration seemed to indicate that such intervention is a foregone conclusion.  The talks seemed to focus on conciliating opposition groups to garner their support for a U.S. military campaign in Iraq (Michael Gordon, New York Times, Aug. 11).

In a joint statement before the talks, the six groups — including the Iraqi National Congress, two Kurdish groups and an Islamic organization based in Tehran — declared their commitment to unity and an end to Hussein’s dictatorship (Peter Slevin, Washington Post, Aug. 11).

At a Pentagon news conference Friday, Rumsfeld noted that international economic sanctions, U.S. military air patrols and other measures against Iraq over the past decade have mostly failed to subdue the regime or prevent it from making nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. 

Containment “has not done the job in this sense,” Rumsfeld said.  “It’s clearly worked for a while.  It clearly has delayed things.  It’s clearly made life more complicated for Saddam Hussein.  But if by ‘work’ you mean, has it actually stopped them from WMD activity, no.”

Despite Rumsfeld’s remarks, some Republican congressional leaders have joined Democrats and members of the international community in questioning the justification for a U.S. military strike on Iraq.  Privately, many senior U.S. military officers have sided with the State Department and intelligence officials who say that Hussein poses no immediate threat and that the United Stats should continue a containment policy instead of attacking Iraq.

Representative Dick Armey (R-Texas), the Republican House majority leader, warned Thursday that an unprovoked attack would violate U.S. tradition and international law and undermine world support for Bush’s plans for a regime change (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, Aug. 10).

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