White House wants to block March report on Iraq

White House wants to block March report on Iraq

By Colum Lynch, Miami Herald, January 17, 2003
The Bush administration is seeking to derail plans by the U.N.'s chief
weapons inspector to issue another report on Iraqi disarmament to the
Security Council in late March, fearing it could delay U.S. plans to force
an early confrontation over Iraq's banned weapons programs.

The administration also resisted calls Wednesday by other nations that it
rule out a war with Iraq without the explicit blessing of the Security
Council, and suggested that it could choose military action even if weapons
inspectors do not find concrete new evidence against Saddam Hussein.

A day after President Bush warned that ''time is running out'' on Hussein, a
senior administration official said the timing of a decision about war would
be ''driven by events.'' Those include a report to be submitted by the U.N.
weapons inspectors Jan. 27 and evidence that Hussein is truly complying with
the U.N. demand that he give up any weapons of mass destruction.

And in a move that diplomats predicted would start a potentially divisive
battle in the Security Council, the administration plans to press the
15-nation body today to a planned March 27 report by Swedish diplomat Hans
Blix in which he was expected to list specific disarmament obligations that
Iraq is required to meet before U.N. sanctions can be suspended.

Blix told the council Tuesday that the March meeting was required under a
1999 resolution that created his inspection agency. But his plans have
complicated the administration's strategy at the United Nations in which it
is pointing to the end of this month as the start of an endgame in the
6-week old U.N. weapons inspections program.

The administration would like a decision on whether to go to war soon after
Blix makes a Jan. 27 presentation to the council, and U.S. officials said
they would ask the council to effectively disregard the 1999 resolution
mandating the later report. Bush is expected to make a strong case for
action against Iraq in his State of the Union address Jan. 28.

By announcing his assumption that he would report again two months later,
Blix underscored that he is following a much more deliberate timetable. That
risks undermining the administration's strategy to ratchet up the pressure
for a decision on whether to go to war later this month and it raised the
prospect that Security Council members, including some U.S. allies, would
use it to justify putting off a decision until March, at the earliest.