U.N. Arms Inspectors Returning to Iraq in Reversal by Baghdad

The United Nations tonight told its weapons inspectors to return to Iraq on Friday after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein apparently ended his defiance of the world body and averted a possible military confrontation with the United States by reversing a ban on American members of the inspection team.

Uncertainty about whether the three-week dispute really had been resolved hung over the U.N. tonight as world leaders tried to absorb the previous 24 hours of fast-moving events, in which Iraq, responding to a Russian initiative, seemingly blinked in the face of a major buildup of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.

Still to be determined, many diplomats here said, is whether Iraq will keep its promise of renewed cooperation and whether it expects concessions such as an easing of U.N. sanctions in return.

The next step toward the answer will come Friday, when approximately 77 inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) fly to Baghdad from Bahrain to test the Iraqi invitation for them to return. The UNSCOM personnel left Iraq a week ago after Saddam Hussein's government ignored warnings from the U.N. Security Council and expelled the six Americans on the team.

Also on Friday, UNSCOM's commissioners, drawn from 20 countries, will meet here in emergency session to decide their next steps in dealing with Iraq. A joint statement by foreign ministers meeting in Geneva early today to resolve the crisis said that Friday's session would explore "ways to make UNSCOM's work more effective on the basis of the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council."

Some diplomatic sources said such language might disguise a way of saying that the meeting will be used to set the stage for relaxing sanctions against Iraq. But U.S. officials strongly denied this. Ambassador Bill Richardson said, "We are not ready to lift sanctions until all Security Council resolutions are complied with by Iraq, and, if necessary, we will use our veto to achieve that objective."

Iraq's backing down was revealed first by Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov at the pre-dawn Geneva meeting, which was attended by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and the foreign ministers of France and Britain. Primakov, who had met earlier in Moscow with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, said that Iraq was prepared to allow UNSCOM to come back and resume its work without preconditions or hindrance.

Albright said later that the agreement involved no concessions by the United States or the United Nations. "The Iraqis are prepared to have the inspectors return unconditionally," she said.

Her statement was echoed in Washington by President Clinton, who expressed cautious optimism about Saddam Hussein's decision. Clinton added, though: "He said he would do that. In the coming days we will wait and see if he does."

A few hours after the Geneva announcement, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, delivered to Secretary General Kofi Annan a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf asking Annan to inform the Security Council that Iraq was issuing "an invitation to [UNSCOM], with its full complement of members, to return to Iraq to pursue its work there."

Following a meeting of the 15-nation council, Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat who heads UNSCOM, announced to reporters that, with the council's acquiescence, he was ordering the inspectors to return to Baghdad early Friday and resume their search for weapons of mass destruction on Saturday.

Butler and Chinese Ambassador Huasan Qin, this month's council president, also announced that Butler will try to make arrangements to travel to Baghdad for discussions with Iraqi officials about implementing a program of future inspections that he outlined in an Oct. 27 letter.

At the beginning of the standoff, Iraq had demanded that the Security Council set a timetable for ending the sanctions that have subjected the country to severe economic hardship ever since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions cannot be lifted until UNSCOM certifies that all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated, and speculation continued to linger here tonight about whether any informal understanding had been reached about easing the U.N. embargo.

Iraqi spokesmen seemed to acknowledge that no deal had been struck to give them relief from the sanctions or to change the composition of the UNSCOM inspection teams. Instead, they expressed hope that Primakov, who has a long-standing special relationship with the Iraqi leadership, will help Iraq to get a better hearing from the Security Council and the world community.

Speaking in Cairo, Aziz told reporters that he "did not make a deal in Moscow." But he added: "The Russian Federation showed concern for the legitimate grievances of Iraq. They realized the lack of balance in the Special Commission and its performance inside Iraq. They . . . promised they would do their best to get the sanctions lifted . . . in order to correct the wrong situation and start a new approach towards Iraq."

Here at the United Nations, Hamdoon took a similar line. "We are satisfied at this point that we have achieved very significant things," he said. "Russia has made a commitment that it will work for a fairer, more efficient inspection regime, and we think there now is much more sympathy for us among Security Council members."

Whether that will prove to be the case is not clear at this point. But many diplomatic sources believe that Iraq's decision to defy UNSCOM was motivated, at least in part, by its belief that the hard-line opposition of the United States toward Saddam Hussein could be checked within the Security Council by the more flexible and sympathetic policies of Russia, France, China and Egypt.

In mid-October, these countries thwarted a U.S.-backed resolution that would have imposed travel restrictions on Iraqi officials. That happened at a time when Iraq was believed to be anxious to prevent UNSCOM inspectors from zeroing in on what are thought to be ongoing Iraqi programs in chemical and biological warfare. According to this theory, the Iraqis apparently believed they could exploit the split within the council by ousting UNSCOM and depending on Russia, France and its other sympathizers to block a serious retaliation by the United States.

That appears to have been a major miscalculation. France, Russia and China all are permanent members of the Security Council, and each has a vested interest in ensuring that the council's dictates are not defied. In addition, Russia and France are believed to have made it clear to the Iraqis that in a crunch they could not ward off a U.S. resort to air and missile attacks.

Underscoring lingering U.S. suspicions about Iraq's pledge to comply, the Pentagon continued to build up forces in the gulf area yesterday, sending 32 more fighter jets and bombers as well as Patriot air defense missiles to Bahrain. Clinton had authorized the deployment on Tuesday but left the decision on when to dispatch the planes up to the commander of U.S. military operations in the gulf, Gen. Anthony Zinni.

But if the initial, tentative impression here is that Saddam Hussein was forced to flinch, that apparently was not evident in Iraq. Reports from Baghdad said the streets were filled with crowds of demonstrators, most of them from state-controlled unions and official organizations, who greeted the news from Geneva with cries of "America has failed in its conspiracy!" and predictions that the sanctions will be lifted imminently.

Staff writers Thomas W. Lippman, traveling with Albright, John Lancaster in Cairo and Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.