TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/051391/0513001.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.9 KB | 198 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 31

THE GULF

Walking the Beat in Iraq


Will the United Nations succeed in its ambitious efforts to
police Saddam Hussein and destroy what remains of his lethal
arsenal?

By LISA BEYER -- Reported by Bonnie Angelo/New York, William
Mader/London and Lara Marlowe/Baghdad


    As the coordinator of United Nations humanitarian
operations in Iraq, Bernt Bernander should be able to expect a
reasonably smooth passage through the streets of his host
country. Recently, though, as Bernander drove north of
Sulaymaniyah to inspect the treatment of Kurdish refugees there,
gunmen ambushed the five-car convoy. They hit three cars with
gunfire, but the occupants miraculously suffered only a few
glass splinters. The assailants, it turned out, were Kurdish
guerrillas who had mistaken the U.N. delegates for Iraqi
government officials. After appropriating one of the vehicles,
the guerrillas apologized for shooting and sent the envoys on
their way.

    No serious harm was done, but the attack served as a
warning to the U.N.'s representatives of the pitfalls they face
in policing Iraq. It is the most ambitious effort yet by the
world body to settle a war and punish an aggressor. Not only
must the organization provide refugee relief and keep the peace
along a disputed border, but it must also oversee reparations
and disarm a nation of its most potent weapons -- which means
finding the arms, destroying them and ensuring that they are
never replaced.

    Working conditions are not ideal. The U.N.'s relief
operations in Iraq are drastically underfunded; a plea to
members for $578 million in start-up money for the region
produced only $105 million. The organization must operate in a
country that has been bombed back to a "preindustrial age," as
a U.N. report described the situation. And the world body is
caught between the conflicting demands of the allies and Iraq.
"We're overwhelmed," says Staffan Bodemar, the chief of mission
in Baghdad for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

    The U.N.'s authority to run so much of Baghdad's business
comes mainly from the cease-fire resolution adopted by the
Security Council on April 3 and grudgingly accepted by Iraq
three days later. Among the main assignments:



    POLICING THE IRAQ-KUWAIT FRONTIER

    As of this week, the U.N. expects all allied troops that
were occupying southern Iraq to depart, leaving the job of
watching over the 120-mile frontier exclusively to its
1,440-person Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission. Among UNIKOM's
members, drawn from 35 countries, are 300 military observers
whose duty is to patrol the nine-mile-wide demilitarized zone
along the border and to report any truce violations on either
side to U.N. headquarters.

    These monitors are accompanied by 650 lightly armed U.N.
peacekeeping troops. Their role is to protect the U.N. observers
and to support personnel; they are powerless to stop any
skirmishes in the demilitarized zone. There is little concern
that Saddam Hussein will risk the consequences of another foray
southward any time soon, but the peacekeepers may have to stay
for years, just as they have remained in Cyprus since 1964 and
in Lebanon since 1978.



    ASSISTING THE KURDS

    Late last month the U.N. agreed to assume the
administration of allied-built refugee centers for Kurds
returning to Iraq from the northern border, where they had fled
after their failed rebellion against Saddam in March. That was
fine with Baghdad, which had itself asked the world body to do
just that. The allies, however, also want to hand over to the
U.N. the job of protecting the Kurds from further reprisals by
Saddam's forces. As it is, nearly 20,000 allied troops are in
northern Iraq watching over the Kurds, and their governments are
anxious to bring them home.

    The deployment of U.N. troops, however, would require
Security Council approval, which the Soviets and Chinese, wary
of expanding the limits of U.N. intervention, would probably
veto. So late last month British Prime Minister John Major
proposed a compromise: instead of dispatching soldiers, the U.N.
would send in police to guard the Kurds. As with U.N. troops,
they would be drawn from member countries. The U.S. supports the
idea, as does the European Community.

    Though Baghdad has condemned the proposal as a violation
of its sovereignty, the Western allies are not moved by such
technicalities. Says a British diplomat: "We are determined to
go ahead." U.N. officials in Iraq insist that the proposal is
not viable unless Baghdad agrees to it. But Western diplomats
contend that Saddam is so eager to see the allies leave and to
have U.N. sanctions lifted that he may eventually sign off on
the plan.

    Even if U.N. police are dispatched, they are no guarantee
against renewed fighting between the Kurds and the government.
The Egyptians pushed past U.N. forces to attack Israel in 1973,
just as the Israelis did when they invaded Lebanon in 1982.



    SUPERVISING REPARATIONS

    Under the terms of the cease-fire, Iraq is responsible for
paying compensation for damages it caused during the war and the
occupation of Kuwait. The claims will be immense; according to
a U.N. estimate, the destruction in Kuwait is on the order of
$8 billion. Reparations are to be paid out of a fund financed
by Iraqi oil revenues and administered by a special U.N.
commission. That body must still determine what portion of
Iraq's oil money to retain. Washington favors seizing 40% to 50%
of the overall revenues, while London proposes 25% to 30%. But
Iraq supporters like Yemen and Cuba want a much lower rate of
10%, arguing that anything higher would punish the Iraqi people
too harshly.

    Of course, Iraq cannot begin to chip away at its
reparations bill until it starts earning income again. Baghdad
has asked the U.N. Sanctions Committee, which includes
representatives of each of the 15 Security Council members, to
unfreeze $1 billion in Iraqi assets overseas and to permit the
export of $1 billion worth of Iraqi oil. The government says it
must have the money to purchase food and other essentials. But
the U.S. and Britain remain skeptical, insisting that Iraq more
clearly demonstrate its needs. They are trying to hold the lid
on sanctions to force Iraq's compliance with the other
cease-fire provisions and to put pressure on Saddam. The Chinese
and Soviets are inclined to be more merciful. That division
promises to make the Security Council's periodic review of the
sanctions, scheduled every 60 days, a political tussle.



    DEFANGING IRAQ

    Under the cease-fire terms, all of Iraq's biological and
chemical weapons are to be destroyed, as are its ballistic
missiles with a range exceeding 93 miles and its ability to
develop a nuclear bomb. Required last month to produce an
inventory of these arms and facilities, Baghdad cheated
shamelessly, underestimating its chemical stocks and claiming
to possess neither biological weapons nor nuclear weapons-grade
material. Last week Iraq submitted a new report and acknowledged
that it possesses 48 lbs. of highly enriched uranium. Some of
that material, Baghdad said, lies buried under bombed reactors.
The rest was reportedly moved to an undisclosed site.

    The U.N. commission charged with locating and destroying
Iraq's lethal arsenal is authorized to search the country for
arms that Baghdad has not accounted for. Allied intelligence
reports should help guide the group, whose members, experts from
21 countries, are to meet for the first time this week. But
surely Iraq will manage to keep some of its secrets, especially
since all trips by U.N. officials outside the capital must be
approved by the government 24 hours in advance. "There is no way
we can find everything," says a British diplomat.

    What the commission does find, it will dismantle,
supposedly within 45 days of the Security Council's approval of
a demolition plan. Destroying a conventional missile is
straightforward. "You remove warheads, crush the body, and
that's it," says Yasushi Akashi, U.N. Under Secretary-General
for Disarmament. With chemical and biological weapons, though,
the process is complicated. "We must be extremely careful about
the environment," says Akashi. The U.N. may have to build a
special facility for getting rid of these armaments; that could
push costs above $100 million.

    The U.N. is also charged with seeing that Iraq's fangs,
once pulled, do not grow back. By Aug. 1, the Secretary-General
is to develop a plan to ensure that Baghdad does not in the
future procure any of the weapons forbidden it. That is an
imposing task, given Saddam's determination in the past to work
around embargoes and also, to be fair, given how many member
countries of the U.N. helped him build his arsenal in the first
place.