Word: annans
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...Friday, Feb. 20, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan flew to the Iraqi capital aboard a Falcon 900 jet lent to him by French President Jacques Chirac. The deceptively soft-spoken Ghanaian listened for two days as the Iraqis pressed their position. On Sunday, Feb. 22, in the massive Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River, he calmly closed a deal with Saddam Hussein. There would be no bombing, at least not now. There was a global sigh of relief...
...Annan sped from the palace back to his guest house and briefed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright by phone. But communications from Baghdad were scratchy, and the line probably had uninvited listeners. Washington's top officials got the encouraging word that Saddam had agreed to open all his buildings to arms-control inspectors, but Clinton and his team were wringing their hands about the details they didn't know...
During a stopover in Paris, Annan refused to fax the final seven-paragraph agreement to Washington, saying he wanted to present it formally to the whole Security Council. U.S. intelligence, however, came up with a bootleg copy of the agreement and delivered it to the White House early Monday. "As soon as we looked at it," says an official, "we knew where the problems were." It was not a vague compromise, as the U.S. had feared, nor had Saddam caved in completely...
When, early last month, Paris and Moscow began pressing for a mission to Baghdad by Annan, Washington was opposed. All such a visit was likely to do, Washington thought, was isolate the U.S. and hobble its ability to carry out air strikes against the Iraqis if they continued to block U.N. arms inspectors...
BAGHDAD: Former Marine captain Scott Ritter successfully inspected Iraqi weapons sites Friday, accompanied by the standard Iraqi escorts. It was business as usual for the UNSCOM inspector, whose branding as a spy by Baghdad reignited the inspection crisis in January -- and that means Kofi Annan's deal with Saddam has passed its first test...