Sunday, August 30, 1998

Policy on Iraq now looks less than consistent

In retrospect, the best solution might have been for the Desert Storm troops to have kept on going until Saddam Hussein was run out of Baghdad. At the time, that did not seem an option. The United Nations resolution limited the war aims to the liberation of Kuwait, and our Arab allies might have balked at the overthrow of a fellow autocrat.

The peace terms were straightforward. Iraq agreed to supervised elimination of its weapons of mass destruction. Once U.N. inspectors certified the weapons and the means of producing and delivering them were gone, the U.N. embargo on Iraq would be lifted. That looked like a year, max, but here we are, seven years later, and the job has still not been completed.

Through bluster and evasion, Iraq had tried desperately to hold onto its weapons-making capacity, and had it not been for the United States, a sanctions-weary U.N. Security Council would probably have been willing to forgive and forget. The times when that force has been necessary -- three actual attacks and two threatened -- the United States has acted alone with only Britain giving unreserved support. The United States, at least, was consistent and steadfast.

Ritter's resignation

Now it appears Secretary of State Madeleine Albright may have intervened to block or delay surprise inspections by the U.N. team in Iraq. If so, that would hardly square with her insistence that the arms inspectors have "full, unfettered and unconditional access." And with an angry blast at the United Nations for making a "farce" of the inspections, one of the longest serving members of the team, American Scott Ritter, has resigned.

With all of its other problems, the Clinton administration has yet to make a full and satisfactory explanation of what it hoped to accomplish by reining in the inspectors. It needs to do so to save American credibility on the inspections. Our policy now appears inconsistent. Maybe we're not as steadfast as we thought.

The U.S.-backed sanctions and inspections policy hasn't been a success but neither has it been a failure: Iraq has not been totally disarmed, but it has not been able to attack its neighbors, either. As Albright has said, Saddam has been kept in a box -- with the lid closed.