Iraq gives some, but enough?

Reporting "good progress" but mixed results during two days of talks with Iraq, United Nations weapons chiefs left Baghdad Sunday having secured UN interviews with scientists and a diplomatic pouch full of more promises.

But despite Iraq's handing over new documents about its anthrax, VX nerve agent, and missile programs, chief UN inspector Hans Blix said cooperation on issues of substance were "less good."

Nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei - who has said Iraq needed to show "drastic change" - said that instead he saw only "the beginning of a change of heart."

The two will take the details of their talks to the UN Security Council on Friday - a critical step in the diplomatic endgame that is likely to show whether Iraq's drip-by-drip compliance is enough to stop the US march to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.

Experts say that Iraq's latest shift toward greater cooperation - while still rejecting U-2 surveillance overflights - is significant, but still leaves Iraq with many moves yet to play.

"When he is really pushed, Saddam has historically made concessions, and I strongly suspect [Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei] will have some tactical successes," says Tim McCarthy, a former UN weapons inspector, now at the Monterey Institute's Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in California. "But in terms of the fundamental strategic change - a government-wide Iraqi decision to disarm - at this moment it's impossible."

To the annoyance of American officials, and underscoring the depth of the international divide over war with Iraq, a report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, said that France and Germany had a "secret" plan to disarm Iraq peacefully. It called for the deployment of thousands of UN soldiers, reconnaissance flights, and a tripling of the number of weapons inspectors. German officials said Sunday they planned to put forward the proposal, which appears to have Russian backing. Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed it as "a diversion, not a solution."

Western officials have long expected some form of Iraqi concessions, similar to those that preceded the 1991 Gulf War and American-led strikes against Iraq in the 1990s. In some cases those efforts delayed military action.

"Saddam Hussein finally realized that the the Americans are going to war," says Charles Heyman, editor of the London-based Jane's World Armies. "Up until then, he was saying, 'It's all bluff; they are frightened of taking casualties.'"

It's not clear that a shift this late in the game will halt the American push for a military solution. "I've certainly never seen a buildup like this where they all went home," Mr. Heyman says, noting the surge of American troops in the region to near 200,000. But avoiding war is cheaper, and can yield a sweeter victory for Mr. Bush and the closest US ally on Iraq, British premier Tony Blair.

"[Chinese philosopher] Sun Tzu said 2,000 years ago: 'The greatest general is the one who wins the war without fighting," Heyman adds. "That's a high-risk strategy, and politicians don't normally gamble like this."

Iraq balked at the U-2 flights, saying until this weekend that it couldn't guarantee their safety, since Iraqi antiaircraft gunners were engaged in cat-and-mouse shootouts over no-fly zones over north and south Iraq.

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