Saddam's olive branch
Irrespective of how the present quarrel between the United States and Iraq will eventually evolve, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's comment that "we have seen this game before" sums up the situation quite nicely. It must be said that the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, is a man well versed in the game of brinkmanship. Threatened with the prospect of an all-out U.S. attack -- with or without the approval of the UN Security Council and with possibly worse consequences for Saddam's regime than Desert Storm in 1991 -- the Iraqi president last Tuesday suddenly agreed to readmit the UN arms inspectors which he had expelled in 1998.
Of course, it would be too naive to assume that Washington is not aware of the game Saddam is playing. After all, as the American Secretary of State remarked, the Iraqi leader has played this game before. Nevertheless, this latest move from Baghdad has properly sent the ball back into Washington's court, which is now placed in the position of having to decide what move to make next. In the meantime, the world can draw a sigh of relief now that the specter of a new war in the Gulf has been averted, at least for now, although it would not at all be realistic to assume that the Bush administration will take Saddam's offer at face value.
So far, the world remains divided on Washington's plan to attack Iraq and unseat its president. Apart from the fact that in the eyes of most of the world Washington has so far failed to produce any hard evidence on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which is President George W. Bush's main argument for an attack. Just the idea that a country, however powerful, can violate the sovereignty of another at will is difficult for most countries to stomach, never mind that Saddam did it to Kuwait. Up to this moment, only Britain has pledged its full support for the American plan. Russia and France, as well as Arab countries earmarked by Washington to become its allies in an eventual war against Iraq, see no need for a new UN resolution on Iraq, considering President Saddam Hussein's latest offer. Most of the rest of the world reject any unilateral measure and insist that any action, whatever its form, be decided on the multilateral plane via the UN.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, however, Washington's fears are easy to understand, especially after the shock it suffered as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks last year in New York and Washington. That attack in one stroke demolished the myth of America's invulnerability and opened the eyes of Americans to the fact that radical elements, of whatever color or breed, can "bring the war home" to America, as some of them have threatened in the past.
It is probably not too far off the mark to say that what Washington fears is not just Iraq's capability to produce weapons of mass destruction and possibly using them against its oil-rich neighbors. Rather, it is the possibility of these weapons somehow falling into the hands of America's most determined enemies, for example the al-Qaeda organization. American intelligence agencies believe al-Qaeda, for one, has been making determined attempts to acquire them. Therefore, if President Saddam Hussein is serious in his stated desire to avert war and assure the world that he has no intention of starting one, the first thing he must do is convince his enemies. This he can accomplish by complying with all the UN resolutions.
On the other hand, it would be well for us to realize that much of the tension in the world today results from the injustices, real and perceived, that prevail in the Middle East, currently the world's number-one trouble spot. Removal of those factors would most certainly help to establish a climate that would be conducive to peace.