Iraq softens line on inspections

IRAQ signalled a softer stance on UN weapons inspectors in a renewed bid to stave off a threatened US assault.

Russia reiterated its opposition to US strikes on Baghdad, telling Iraq that it wanted inspections resumed and an eventual end to UN sanctions imposed for Iraq’s 1990 seizure of Kuwait.

Perhaps seeking to exploit the Bush administration’s failure to speak with one voice on Iraq, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said Baghdad had not ruled out a return of the inspectors, who left in 1998 ahead of a US-British bombing blitz.

“It’s still under consideration,” he said in Johannesburg, where he was attending the Earth Summit.

The comment seemed to reverse Aziz’s remarks on Sunday when he told CNN that letting the experts back under the direction of chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix was not an option.

“We will dispatch envoys to all countries in the world ... to explain our position and rally them against the aggression,” Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who sought support in Lebanon and Syria last week, declared in Baghdad yesterday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who visited China last week, flew to Moscow to argue Baghdad’s case to another of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Sabri was due to visit Egypt, another staunch opponent of any attack on Iraq, after his talks in Russia.

The Bush administration has sought to portray its quarrel with Baghdad as part of the “war on global terror” which it launched after the September 11 attacks.

But discord over Iraq appeared to sharpen at the weekend when Secretary of State Colin Powell seemed to differ with Vice President Dick Cheney over UN inspections, and President Bush was criticised for his team’s disharmony.

Last week Cheney strongly advocated a pre-emptive military strike, saying the return of arms teams would provide “no assurance whatsoever” of Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions.

Powell said on Sunday that reinserting the teams “as a first step” was a priority.

“The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return,” he said.

Powell’s emphasis chimed with calls by many of Washington’s European and Arab allies, and its Security Council partners, to channel any action against Iraq through the UN.

Few countries, apart from Israel, have shown any enthusiasm for a unilateral US military strike and many are fiercely opposed to any invasion explicitly aimed at “regime change”.