Keith Devens .com

Inspectors' access conditional

I heard about this on the radio today:

The US and Britain returned to the brink of war today as Saddam Hussein's dramatic promise to allow unfettered weapons inspections turned out to have strings attached.

Iraq made a surprise offer late last night to provide "unconditional access" to United Nations inspectors, raising hopes of a peaceful outcome to the Gulf crisis.

But today it emerged that the offer only applied to military bases - which could let Saddam hide chemical and biological arms stockpiles elsewhere.

Iraq seemed to have succeeded in opening cracks in the fragile international coalition, however. Although the United States dismissed his offer as a ploy, France and Germany promptly questioned the need for a fresh UN resolution setting a deadline for Iraq to comply with existing rules.

Ali Muhsen Hamid claimed Iraq was being sincere, but he stipulated that civilian sites would not be available to the inspectors. "We support anywhere, any military site (for inspections), but not as some people have suggested for inspections against hospitals, against schools."

Hospitals are among key sites for inspections because of evidence that Saddam uses health laboratories to manufacture viruses for biological weapons.

... during the last, failed, round of inspections, the Iraqi president redesignated about half of his most secret military installations as " presidential palaces", ruling them out of bounds to inspectors.

France was the first of the big five Security Council members to waver, suggesting that a new resolution be put on hold. And its top general flatly ruled out any preemptive strike against Saddam. -- shut up France