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Before U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors were forced to pull out of Iraq in December 1998, the world knew what Iraq had. At least four tons of VX gas--a sulfurous compound that is among the most toxic chemical agents--were unaccounted for, as well as an estimated several hundred metric tons of the raw materials required to make sarin and mustard gas. After years of denying that it even had a biological-weapons program, Iraq admitted in 1995 that it had produced 8,500 liters of concentrated anthrax and 19,000 liters of undiluted botulinum toxin. UNSCOM destroyed...
...Saddam be contained? Any diplomatic scenario depends heavily on Russia. Not only are rogue elements within Russia the likeliest source of fissionable material for Iraq's nuclear-weapons program, but the Kremlin has been Saddam's strongest ally in rejecting UNSCOM inspections. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Colin Powell has pressured Russia to change its stance, but so far he has met with resistance. Within the Administration, a battle is raging between Powell and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who proposes bombing Iraq for harboring terrorists. Dick Cheney is said to have sided with Powell, though that could change...
...election year, but why should Moscow care? Russia made life difficult for the U.S. Monday by formally rejecting Kofi Annan's nomination of Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus to head up a new U.N. weapons-monitoring commission in Iraq. Ekeus, a former head of the soon-to-be-disbanded UNSCOM, had been widely viewed as being both sufficiently diplomatic and sufficiently forceful to get the job done, but the Russian veto reflects deep divisions in the Security Council over the future of sanctions against Iraq. "The U.S. wants the new monitoring system as a basis to maintain sanctions against Iraq," says...
...after a U.S. got the UN Security Council to approve a new system to get arms inspectors back into Iraq, Saddam Hussein gave his answer: Nobody's coming in here until the UN lifts its sanctions against my country. Under the proposed deal, the previous inspection body, UNSCOM, would to be replaced by an entirely new organization, UNMOVIC (U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) with little continuity in staff. "The old hands at UNSCOM fear that the new body will be a papier-m?ch? organization, unable to carry out effective inspections," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. "But Washington...
...that you can't forget about Iraq, and it's hard to see what the bombing accomplished except to end the monitoring system. Now the U.S. appears to have come around to the European approach, emphasizing the need to have monitors in there." The danger now, though, is that UNSCOM (the United Nations Special Commission) gets replaced with a tamer and less confrontational monitoring body. "UNSCOM's combativeness eventually created political problems for both the Iraqis and the West," says Dowell. "There may be a temptation to avoid confrontation in a future monitoring system. And that's potentially a major...