UN report on Iraq: grist for many mills

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington late last week released a report estimating inspectors would take a year to achieve Iraqi disarmament. It also concluded that if the continued threat of US military force brought this about without war, it would be an "enormous and enormously popular ... victory" for Mr. Bush.

"Only if the administration's true aim is to remove the current government of Iraq as a matter of principle would a turn to war at this moment make sense," the Carnegie report states. "If that is the case, of course the inspection and disarmament process now under way is irrelevant."

Even the possibility of a peaceful solution - rejected by some analysts as unworkable, given an Iraq regime that has sought for years to conceal WMD programs - is energizing the peace camp.

"The need now is to find captains that can take the antiwar ship to its destination," says Hans von Sponeck, the German former head of UN humanitarian operations in Iraq. He is in Baghdad pushing a peace initiative to bring an "eminent statesman" to Iraq.

"The climate is gradually changing: We are going from a season of acceptance [of war], to a season of opposition," Mr. Von Sponeck says, noting the breadth of anti-war sentiment worldwide, including the leaders of US allies France and Germany. The "only hope now is that they see increasing domestic pressure [against war], and a warning that this 'coalition of the willing' - if it existed - is shrinking," he adds.

Von Sponeck would not confirm suggestions from other sources that Mr. Mandela, the respected first president of post-apartheid South Africa, would play a role in creating a "win-win" situation that would both avert a war and ensure disarmament.

Western diplomats say his reputation in Washington and London was damaged by his 1999 embrace of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, whose agents were implicated in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner.

Many argue it is too late for a peace proposal, that Mr. Hussein can't be trusted, and that the peace-for-disarmament equation already exists. But the US has not explicitly stated it would not launch a war, if Iraq disarmed.

"Bush has already said 'We're not in negotiation mode; [Hussein] has had 11 years to come up with the goods,'" says Andrew Brookes, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

"I don't see any scope for a negotiated deal out of this," Mr. Brookes says. "Everybody has said: 'If [Hussein] comes up clean, and everything is got rid of, he stays and nobody invades. That has always been the case."

What the inspectors find - a "final" report is due on Feb. 21 - will almost certainly make a difference in the debate.

The US has begun to supply intelligence about suspected WMD sites. Inspectors last week found 12 empty and undeclared chemical artillery shells, and 3,000 pages of documents, apparently related to past nuclear programs. A visit to Baghdad by Blix and Mr. Al Barradei last weekend led to an Iraqi promise to encourage scientists to be interviewed without Iraqi officials present. But almost all have refused.

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