Expectations low for Iraq-U.N. talks

Thorny issues of arms inspections and sanctions to be discussed

By CNN United Nations Producer Ronni Berke

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Since the end of the Cold War, no issue has bedeviled and divided the 15 nations of the United Nations Security Council as much as Iraq.

Iraq policy at the U.N. is more like a diplomatic poker game, with all cards drawn and each player waiting for the others to fold.

The latest hand will be dealt Monday: talks at the U.N. between Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saed al-Sahaf and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

No one at the U.N. expects a winner to emerge.

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For Baghdad, the stakes are high. Iraq's principal goal is the removal of 10-year-old economic sanctions that Baghdad claims have crippled the Iraqi economy and caused its people to suffer.

"The comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq have entered their eleventh year," al-Sahaf told the General Assembly last September. "By any standard, these sanctions amount to genocide and they involve a brutal application of collective punishment and taking revenge on an entire people."

Iraq wants the Security Council to spell out exactly what it must do to get sanctions suspended or lifted. Iraqi officials complain that Resolution 1284, passed in December 1999, never gives a clear time frame for the suspension of sanctions.

Its primary adversary, Washington, insists that Iraq must admit U.N. weapons inspectors and confirm that it has disarmed for the sanctions to be suspended.

Russia, China and France have openly called for the lifting of sanctions and often advocate Iraq's views at back-door negotiations.

"This 'embargo generation' is a lost generation," French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte told the Security Council.

Where they once sought approval from the sanctions committee before sending passenger flights into Iraq, many countries are now sending planes into Baghdad at will. Russia, China and France claim that only notification is needed -- not explicit approval, and that such flights do not violate the embargo.

With the recent airstrikes near Baghdad, the U.S. -- and to some extent, Britain -- have become more isolated from their diplomatic partners.

"They've been fraying for the last three, four, five years, because of the commercial interests and regional interests," says Ruth Wedgewood of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The council came together 10 years ago to create the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), charged with verifying Iraqi compliance with resolutions on disarmament.

Today, the Gulf War coalition has come undone. Iraq has refused to accept resolution 1284. Inspectors from the new arms agency for Iraq -- The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- have not been admitted into that country.

"It would be inappropriate for me to assume they still have weapons of mass destruction, but at the same time, it would be naive to exclude that possibility," UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix told CNN.

UNSCOM inspectors withdrew from Iraq two years ago, on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes of suspected weapons sites. Since then, Baghdad has stepped up its verbal war against the embargo, putting Washington on the defensive about its sanctions policy both within the U.N. Security Council and throughout the Arab world.

U.N. officials and diplomats also suspect Iraq has increased violations of the oil embargo. Syria and Iraq reopened a key oil pipeline last year. Many at the U.N. are not sure how much oil, if any, is being smuggled out of Iraq through that pipeline. Several diplomats say they believe that Iraq is using middlemen to extract a surcharge on oil from countries that are buying its crude legitimately under the U.N.'s "oil-for-food" program.

There are angry disputes over the validity of economic sanctions as a means to an end. If the aim was to have verifiable disarmament and arms monitoring in Iraq, diplomats say, sanctions have clearly failed to achieve that goal.

Some diplomats say it is impossible to negotiate with Iraq on sanctions and disarmament if the United States continues to support the Iraqi opposition and its aim of ousting President Saddam Hussein.

Diplomats tell CNN that although they do not expect any breakthrough in this week's talks, it's a positive sign that the Iraqis are engaging the U.N. again.

"You have to have some hope, otherwise I wouldn't be getting into this exercise," Annan said. "It may take some time. I don't think we are going to have a miraculous breakthrough, but at least it's a beginning."

"Talks can always be useful," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said during his recent visit to the U.N. Powell called on Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions, "to allow inspectors in, so that they can verify that the weapons are no longer there that they claim are no longer there."

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Iraqi National Congress
United Nations
  • UNSCOM
  • UNMOVIC
Office of the Iraq Programme
Iraqi Presidency

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