Tuesday, November 17, 1998

Make this deal the last deal with Saddam

In announcing that Saddam Hussein had backed down and agreed to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, President Clinton and his advisers did not look, act or sound like a team that had won a victory, and for good reason: They had not.

This latest deal only puts the United States and the U.N. back to where they were before Saddam halted the inspections. Baghdad has bought time, and the United States has gotten an expensive delay. We are now committed to maintaining a costly strike force in the Mideast to insure that, this time, unlike a dozen previous times, Iraq really does comply with the inspections.

Saddam Hussein has made this identical promise before - immediate, total and unfettered access to sites where weapons of mass destruction are built and stored - and he has broken this promise every time. He almost certainly will break this latest commitment when he senses a weakening of the U.N.'s will to maintain the eight-year-old embargo against Iraq.

The Clinton administration should have gone ahead with a military strike last week, the moment the Arab nations indicated their tacit acceptance of the use of force. Now we are stuck with this latest deal, but there are ways of improving its slim chances for success.

The U.N. should insist on a greatly enhanced and expanded inspection team. Access to sites must be immediate. Any delay or obstruction should be construed as breaking the deal. The U.N. should tighten its leaking embargo against Iraq and insist on an effective monitoring apparatus to insure food and medicine bought under an exception to that embargo go the Iraqi people and not Saddam's military apparatus.

By some miracle, Saddam might abide by this latest arrangement, but the probability is that the United States and the U.N. are only postponing the inevitable. The problem in eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is not the inspectors, not the U.N. Security Council, not a vengeful United States. The problem is Saddam Hussein. If he violates this deal, the price of calling off the next military strike must be that Saddam goes, willingly or unwillingly.