Patience and Pressure

President Bush was right this week to make the distinction between Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspections and mere noninterference. Iraq must not force inspectors to guess where weapons or their components are hidden; if they have the weapons, they should produce them without further delay. The White House, sending signals all week that it was about the take a hard stand on the work of the UN team doing the inspections, has explained clearly what it expects.

Beyond these statements, however, the word from Washington is less clear. The administration’s demand that UN inspectors essentially abduct Iraqi scientists and ship them to the United States, a view reportedly resisted by the State Department, is a dangerous stretch of what is allowed under the Security Council resolution. The resolution requires the inspectors have unimpeded access to these scientists “inside or outside” Iraq, but not ownership.

Such a policy is also antithetical to U.S. standards and sounds more like a policy of the military juntas of Latin America in the 1980s. The administration contends that the previous inspectors in Iraq were most effective when given tips from informed Iraqi sources, and this is no doubt true, but those sources were voluntary. Information gotten from captured scientists would be considered coerced by other UN members, which would have reason to distance themselves from U.S. policy, including for war.

Administration officials are ready this weekend to declare Iraq in material breach of the Security Council resolution, saying they have evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction despite Saddam Hussein’s denials and the lack of evidence turned up by inspectors. The administration’s comments midweek laid the groundwork for such a conclusion, when in Louisiana the president asserted Iraq not only has them but has used them. The comments did nothing to help the UN inspection teams and prompted Demetrius Perricos, head of the team conducting inspections for biological and chemical weapons, to say that the United States had information about weapons it was refusing to share with the inspectors. The administration has yet to adequately answer this serious charge, leading some to suggest that it prefer the inspectors not to find the weapons.

There is no evidence for this, but on the deadline for compliance there is also no suggestion that the inspectors have been refused access to Iraqi facilities. That suggests renewed inspections, more detailed communication between the United Nations and Iraq and increased invitations to Iraqi officials to offer information in exchange for protection.

Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration’s get-tough policy against Iraq has found support at home and even at the United Nations in ways the Clinton administration and, to some extent, the first Bush administration, could not achieve. Whether Iraq has direct links to al-Qaida, heads of state have recognized it for a decade as a supporter of world terrorism, and Saddam Hussein’s domestic human-rights abuses are deplorable. The current administration needs ways to build pressure on Iraq while building support for a potential war. Patience and pressure will keep an international alliance together while exposing Iraq as the dangerous place it remains.