By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 8, 1998; Page A25

UNITED NATIONS—When Secretary General Kofi Annan returned from Baghdad last month with an agreement defusing a possible military confrontation in the Persian Gulf, he brought back with him a controversial new job opening: a position for a diplomat to oversee weapons inspections in Iraq's so-called presidential sites.

U.S. officials in particular were skeptical that the post would give Iraq and countries more sympathetic to its desire to end U.N. sanctions a greater role in determining the methods and timing of weapons inspections until now the sole domain of the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, diluting and possibly politicizing the process. Those concerns have been largely allayed, at least for the moment, by Annan's choice to lead the group, Jayantha Dhanapala, a diplomat from the southwest Asian island nation of Sri Lanka. For the past several days, Dhanapala has worked with Annan and other key players to draw up rules for conducting inspections under the agreement worked out with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. On Monday, he will fly to Baghdad to begin putting the plan with its still secret rules into operation.

The selection of Dhanapala, who is U.N. undersecretary general for disarmament affairs, was aimed in large part at reassuring U.S. officials of the credibility of the Annan plan, officials here say. Dhanapala, 59, is well-known in Washington, having been Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States from 1995 to 1997. More importantly, he has become a highly respected figure by all sides within the arcane world of arms control and disarmament affairs.

That reputation stems from long years of disarmament work, highlighted in 1995 when he was president of a mammoth, month-long U.N. conference that effectively made permanent the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which underpins efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Dhanapala was lauded for back-room negotiating skills, his command of parliamentary tactics and his sense of humor to steer the conference successfully through mistrust and standoffs between nuclear powers and poor Third World countries.

"His management of the conference was so brilliant that many participants came away thinking he would some day make a fine secretary general of the United Nations," said Joseph Cirincione, who then directed a coalition of independent arms control research groups. "He managed to balance the desires of the United States with the demands of nonnuclear states into compromises so effective that the parties didn't think of them as compromises: They felt they came out as winners."

His "ability to straddle the worlds of nonaligned groups and big powers like the United States should prove a great asset in threading his way though the pitfalls of the Iraq situation," added Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimsom Center, which researches arms control.

Navigating through the center of the Iraq crisis is not exactly what Dhanapala thought he would be doing when he arrived here in January. He had retired from Sri Lanka's diplomatic service and was recruited by Annan to carve out a new, high priority role for the United Nations in disarmament.

"As part of his program to reform and restructure the United Nations, the secretary general thinks arms control should be a major subject to focus on in the new millennium," Dhanapala said in an interview. "He thinks there is a unique opportunity for the United Nations to act as a post-Cold War clearing house and consensus builder among member countries to get more effective disarmament in everything from weapons of mass destruction to checking the traffic in small arms."

In the case of Iraq, the success or failure of U.N. efforts will determine whether future inspections will aid in the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or whether continued Iraqi obstruction will cause the United States to renew its threats of air and missile strikes against Iraq.

Annan's plan is aimed at overcoming Iraq's desire to shield from inspections by UNSCOM eight sites that it claims are vital to its national security. The accord calls for these sites to be searched by a Special Group consisting of UNSCOM inspectors accompanied by senior diplomats. Dhanapala, as commissioner of the Special Group, will forward its reports to Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat who is the UNSCOM executive chairman, for submission to the Security Council.

That puts the Special Group commissioner in the position of balancing some tasks that very quickly could prove to be at cross purposes. He must obtain sufficient Iraqi cooperation to ensure that the inspections are carried out effectively and without interference; he must work harmoniously with Butler and UNSCOM, and he must lead the Special Group in ways that satisfy the Clinton administration and its suspicious Republican critics in Congress that UNSCOM retains effective control over the inspection process.

Butler, who has known Dhanapala for years, said he is delighted by his appointment as the Special Group commissioner. The two collaborated on drawing up the ground rules for inspecting the disputed sites. They are to be made public on Monday.

In the meantime, Dhanapala refuses to comment on what they will say or how the commissioner's responsibilities are to be defined. Instead, he said he hopes the Iraqi impasse soon will be resolved and he can turn back to more far-ranging disarmament issues.

"There is a wide open role for the United Nations to become the prime consensus builder in disarmament activities," he said. "Whether you are talking about nuclear weapons or small arms, no one country can dictate the agenda. In the past, every breakthrough in the field has been the result of harmonizing the national interests of many countries. Now we hope the United Nations can be an instrument for synthesizing the ideas that come from many directions into effective new initiatives."

Dhanapala said he envisions building up a high level of expertise within the U.N. secretariat on disarmament issues and making it available to member countries that lack that kind of resource. He cites the recent international agreement on eliminating land mines as an example of what can be done.

"This was something that started with nongovernmental groups, and then once it was rolling, many individual governments and the United Nations embraced it and helped bring it to completion," he said. "We think the United Nations can do similar things by finding ideas whose time appears to have come and getting them moving through the various U.N. channels such as the General Assembly, the disarmament commission in Geneva or by encouraging member states to become their champion."