| Hans Blix, by now a household name from New York to New Delhi,
begins his fateful mission this week: rooting out Saddam Hussein's
hidden programs for making nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Everyone should wish the chief U.N. weapons inspector and his colleagues
success, but the odds are against it. Instead of disarmament, we are
likely to get a prolonged process of paper pushing.
The main concern is Mr. Blix himself. The 74-year-old Swede was not
the top choice for the job. The United States backed Rolf Ekeus, the
highly effective leader of the U.N. Special Commission that inspected
Iraq in the 1990s. But Iraq's champions in the U.N. Security Council,
Russia and France, vetoed Mr. Ekeus as too aggressive. They put up Mr.
Blix instead. After ineffectual opposition from the Clinton
administration, Mr. Blix took over the present U.N. inspection
organization (called UNMOVIC) in January 2000.
Nuclear Negligence
There is a reason why Iraq's friends preferred Mr. Blix. He already
had an unsurpassed record of failure in dealing with Saddam Hussein.
From 1981 to 1997, Mr. Blix headed the International Atomic Energy
Agency, the U.N. body responsible for inspecting nuclear sites around
the world - including Iraq's - to make sure they are not cranking out
atomic bombs. As late as 1990, the same year Iraq invaded Kuwait, Mr.
Blix's inspectors rated Iraq's cooperation as "exemplary." But
all the while Saddam was running a vast A-bomb program under their very
noses. Iraq produced both plutonium and enriched uranium for nuclear
weapons in clear violation of the IAEA's rules. Some of the work went on
at the same places that were being inspected, and was hidden with the
help of an Iraqi official who was himself a former IAEA inspector. (His
knowledge of inspection techniques helped dupe his former colleagues).
Had the Gulf War not intervened, Iraq might have made its first bomb
without anyone being the wiser.
Mr. Blix's spokesman at UNMOVIC has tried to explain this
embarrassment by claiming that Mr. Blix had only limited powers under
the IAEA's rules. But the facts are otherwise. Mr. Blix had a lot of
discretion, and he always used it to reduce the effectiveness of
inspections.
For example, Iraq possessed more than 45 kilograms of highly
enriched uranium before the Gulf War, far more than the 25 kilograms
that the IAEA officially said was enough to make an atomic bomb. Iraq
had imported the uranium from Russia and France as reactor fuel, but it
would work in a bomb just as well. Now, when a country like Iraq has
more than a bomb's worth of weapon-usable uranium, the IAEA is supposed
to inspect it every three weeks, because that is all the time it is
supposed to take to fashion it into a warhead. Under Mr. Blix, however,
the IAEA was inspecting it only every six months. Why? Because the
uranium was stored in a number of separate "material balance
areas" (where the inspectors went to measure it) and there was less
than a bomb's worth in each!
The areas were only a mile or so apart, so the whole thing was
absurd. The stuff could be assembled in days, if not hours. But rather
than annoy the Iraqis with frequent inspections, Mr. Blix chose the
head-in-the-sand approach - which the Iraqis were quick to exploit.
Immediately after the last six-month inspection before the Gulf War,
they diverted the uranium to a crash nuclear weapon effort, which only
the war prevented from succeeding.
Mr. Blix maintained this user-friendly stance even after the war. In
May 1991, at the close of the first U.N. inspection, Iraq had accounted
for the 45 kilograms of uranium it had imported, so Mr. Blix wanted to
issue a report saying that everything was fine. But a minority of the
inspection team wouldn't go along. They just couldn't understand why the
Iraqis had torn out the foundations of bombed-out buildings as far as
several meters down, while leaving other buildings untouched. They
suspected that by removing the floors, Iraq had concealed evidence that
the buildings had been used to process uranium domestically. Mr. Blix
had no sympathy for such suspicions; he was determined to issue the
report anyway. The minority (two American weapon experts) nevertheless
held the report up until an Iraqi defector revealed a vast home-grown
uranium processing program - saving Mr. Blix from humiliation.
Former leaders of the U.N. Special Commission say that Mr. Blix
continued to accommodate the Iraqis during the 1990s. On repeated
occasions, the commission had to use its power to designate sites for
inspection in Iraq over Mr. Blix's opposition. He objected on the ground
that the sites were sensitive, and the inspections risked being too
confrontational.
Nor does he seem to relish the new powers he received this month
from the unanimous passage of U.N. Resolution 1441. U.N. inspectors can
now demand that Iraqi scientists be made available for interviews
outside the country, and that they be allowed to bring their families.
There the scientists could tell the truth without retaliation. This
technique could unmask Saddam's weapons in a hurry. But Mr. Blix is not
interested. He has dismissed this avenue as having "practical
difficulties."
Why such curious behavior? Because Mr. Blix faces a dilemma. The
only way he can disarm Iraq is if Saddam Hussein decides to fess up and
admit what he has. Saddam might do that if he decides that keeping his
head is more important than keeping his weapons. Then inspections could
work. They are, after all, designed to verify disarmament, not produce
it.
If Saddam doesn't fess up, Mr. Blix has a losing hand. If he is
aggressive, and proves Saddam is lying, it will show noncooperation,
just what the Pentagon is waiting for. Mr. Blix will then be the chump
in the play - the first U.N. bureaucrat to hand the world a war.
Scurrying Sideways
To avoid that, Mr. Blix has an incentive to scurry sideways, like a
crab, shunning confrontation. He has, in fact, already taken that
direction. According to his press spokesman in Baghdad, the inspectors
have no immediate plans to pressure Saddam Hussein. Instead, they plan
to occupy themselves "for some time" at sites already visited
by earlier groups of inspectors, where they will check on things
expected to be there. With hundreds of sites and pieces of equipment
already listed in their files, this process could keep the paper flowing
for the better part of a year.
But there would be no disarmament. Inspections are not an end in
themselves. They are supposed to implement the latest U.N. resolution
which demands that Iraq disclose and surrender any chemical, biological
or nuclear weapons or face "serious consequences."
If the inspectors continue as they have begun, Saddam will never be
forced to give up his mass destruction arsenal - which every Western
intelligence service believes he has - because Mr. Blix will never
uncover what is hidden. The world should demand that Mr. Blix confront
Saddam now with the best evidence the West can muster, and insist on
explanations. Unless he does so, Mr. Blix will have the distinction of
missing the Iraqi bomb before the Gulf War, missing it afterward, and
now missing it once again.
Mr. Milhollin directs the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control
in Washington, D.C.
http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs/editorials/2002/hanstimid-11-26-02.htm
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