By
The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS - Iraq and the United Nations opened a new chapter in their tumultuous recent history yesterday with talks aimed at breaking an impasse that has kept U.N. weapons inspectors out of Baghdad for more than two years.
Expectations were low that two days of talks between Secretary General Kofi Annan and Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf would produce any breakthrough on restarting inspections - or on lifting sanctions, as Baghdad has demanded.
Indeed, Annan tempered expectations as he arrived at U.N. headquarters, saying he didn't expect miracles. But he said he was encouraged by what he called an "important and healthy shift" in the attitude about Iraq sanctions from certain governments.
He cited the review that the Bush administration is conducting into its Iraq policy, and similar assessments being undertaken by other key governments about sanctions.
"For a long time the attitude had been 'This is our policy. This the way we do things,'" Annan said. "But I think recently we have put on the table that critical question of 'What should we be doing?' And I hope out of this review and search will emerge a constructive way forward."
Al-Sahhaf, for his part, said he would explain in detail during the talks that Iraq had fully complied with U.N. resolutions requiring that it destroy its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles used to deliver them.
"Now it is the role of the Security Council to implement its mutual obligations towards Iraq: That means an immediate lift of sanctions imposed on Iraq," al-Sahhaf said.
U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq Dec. 16, 1998 - hours before the United States and Britain launched four days of airstrikes to punish Baghdad for what they said was its failure to cooperate with U.N. arms searches.
Inspectors haven't been back since - and al-Sahhaf said upon his departure from Baghdad on Feb. 19 that Iraq wouldn't accept them as a condition to lifting sanctions.
But the Security Council has said U.N. weapons inspectors must return to Iraq to start verifying that its weapons are gone before it would even consider suspending the trade embargo imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"We would hope - since we're always optimistic - that the Iraqis would come and say that they have finally decided to begin implementing the resolutions," said Acting U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham. "But that's certainly not the expectation."
Hopes for progress from the U.N. end are also tempered by uncertainties surrounding the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell is in the region, marking the 10th anniversary of Kuwait's liberation from Iraq and meeting with Iraq's neighbors. He is trying to impress on them the U.S. view that Saddam Hussein poses a threat to them and deserves to have sanctions made more effective.
But support for sanctions in the Middle East and elsewhere is waning after 10 years. China, as well as France and Russia, have pressed for sanctions against Iraq to be suspended.
These three permanent Security Council members have also sharply criticized U.S. and British patrols of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, which were established after the Persian Gulf War to protect minority Kurds and Shiites from Saddam's forces.
All three - and a host of Arab nations - bitterly condemned the airstrikes earlier this month near Baghdad, and Iraqi officials have said the attacks would be raised at the talks with Annan.
"If they expected any results from the talks with the U.N., then why didn't they wait to strike Iraq so they could say that the dialogue was not up to their expectations?" Saddam was quoted as saying during a Cabinet meeting Sunday, the state-owned newspaper al-Jumhuriya reported yesterday.
Annan didn't bow to Iraq's request that he condemn the strikes, but he did say their timing, so close to the talks, was "awkward."
