It is beginning to look more and more like Saddam Hussein is in control as he plays games with the United States, Great Britain and the United Nations. The U.N. inspectors and their leader, Richard Butler, are all unwelcome in the vicinity of Hussein’s 1,000 palaces and uninspected warehouses. Now he is not even bothered with the formality of locking the front doors as his soldiers usher the forbidden chemicals and weapons out the back door.

I cannot understand why the United States, Great Britain and the U.N. negotiators stood meekly by while Butler was demoted and dismissed in 1997 leaving the U.N. with no control over Hussein’s mass production of chemical weapons and arms. It is beginning to look like they are just waiting for him to die so that a more reasonable person will take over in Baghdad. That line of reasoning has not worked in the case of Castro for 18 years, and he might live for another 18 years as he has now quit smoking cigars.

The appointment of U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan as a replacement for Butler has done nothing to curb Hussein’s actions. Annan’s job was to avert an airstrike by the United States and Britain; in this he was successful, but at what price? As matters now stand, it will still take an airstrike to bring out into the open a full accounting of Hussein’s weapons and chemicals.

I close with the hope that the U.N. will be more supportive of the United States and Britain and finish the job that has do be done in Iraq before the task becomes so monumental that it will be virtually impossible.

Lloyd I. Farnham

St. Stephen, New Brunswick