BOSTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- New York Times
After four years, United Nations weapons inspectors are back in Iraq making unannounced visits to factories and other locations where illegal weapons may be manufactured, stored or documented. That is encouraging, and directly attributable to President Bush's efforts to bring Iraq into compliance with longstanding Security Council instructions to give up its unconventional weapons. But the work of the inspectors alone isn't going to disarm Iraq. That will require the active cooperation of the Baghdad regime. This weekend will bring the first clear indication of whether Saddam Hussein intends to work with the U.N. or defy it.
As Americans follow the intricate moves now being made on the Iraqi chessboard, they shouldn't lose sight of the ultimate objective, reaffirmed last month by the Security Council. Iraq has to get rid of its biological and chemical arms and missiles and the means to make them, and abandon its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. That can be accomplished in one of two ways. Iraq can make a full declaration of its weapons arsenal this weekend, and then work with the U.N. to destroy the arms. If it doesn't, the United States is likely to use military force to disarm Iraq. A peaceful resolution would be far preferable. ...
The Bush administration was right yesterday to make clear that once this weekend's report has been filed, Iraq has the further obligation to take the inspectors to all relevant weapons sites and make the scientists and technicians who worked on these programs available to answer their questions. The world has run out of tolerance for further evasions and deceptions.
Washington Times
Just what will the world do about Robert Mugabe, architect of Zimbabwe's despair? Zimbabwe's raging food crisis has recently been reassessed, and experts now say the country's food crisis has advanced into an impending famine.
Meanwhile, America's options for dealing with Zimbabwe's president-by-fraud range from the unattractive to the whimsical to the potentially catastrophic. Choosing the best course of action from this menu is tricky enough. Getting other countries to follow in kind implies another set of challenges.
Thanks principally to Mr. Mugabe's land expropriation policy, 12 million Zimbabweans are facing the threat of starvation in Zimbabwe, according to the World Food Program. If this hunger-dictator scenario seems too familiar (think Somalia), it's because Africa has seen much too much of it. ...
Fortunately, African countries are beginning to voice clear condemnation of Mr. Mugabe's thuggish policies. In Brussels late last month, legislators from Ghana, Botswana and Mozambique harshly criticized Mr. Mugabe. Sadly, South Africa and other countries spoke out in support of Zimbabwe and were able to scuttle a planned meeting between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Union (EU) in Brussels, after EU officials said Zimbabwe was barred from participating in the meeting.
U.S. diplomacy should vigorously encourage greater momentum for these condemnations. And, if the administration can continue distributing food without Mr. Mugabe's control, it should continue to do so. Hopefully, Mr. Mugabe won't take away Zimbabweans' last hope. It is an outrage that this former breadbasket of Africa should turn into a starvation field.
Washington Post
"Never trust a fat man in a thin country" is an ancient Central Asian proverb of modern relevance. Indeed, it was hard not to recall it this week, after the publication of photographs of Saddam Hussein's Sijood palace. The photographs were taken on the occasion of the U.N. weapons inspectors' entrance into the palace, which itself was a noteworthy event: Many have argued that the Iraqi dictator's palaces and their enormous grounds may hide evidence of Iraqi weapons manufacture, and Iraq long resisted opening them to inspectors.
But the internal and external architecture of the palace, one of several dozen the Iraqi dictator has spent billions of dollars building over the past decade, also tells its own story. Iraq, after all, is not a wealthy country, and Saddam Hussein has long argued against the Western sanctions that he claims are making his people poorer. Yet neither the White House, nor 10 Downing Street, nor even the Elysée Palace -- the homes of leaders of the West -- compares in ostentation to Sijood, which isn't even one of Saddam Hussein's grandest constructions. ...
Above all, monumental architecture expresses the dictator's belief in his regime's immortality and in his own longevity. But more likely than not it will be regarded, long after its creator's passing, as simply another monument to bad taste and worse government.
Houson Chronicle
With eyes -- and bomb sights -- set on Iraq, it's easy to lose sight of that other pending crisis over a hostile regime with weapons of mass destruction -- the nuclear weapons program in North Korea.
South Korea's ambassador to the United States, Yang Sung Chul, brought some focus and helpful perspective on the matter in Houston this week when he talked about his nation's ongoing "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the North.
"Unlike in the early 1990s," he said, "the tension level on the Korean peninsula is now at an all-time low. The bilateral and multilateral dialogue mechanisms with North Korea are firmly in place. Above all ... the South Korean people have learned to respond to such crises in a far more mature and controlled manner," Yang told a group here co-sponsored by the Asia Society and the Baker Institute. ...
Such interaction, he correctly pointed out, is the fruit of "the most time-consuming and nerve-wracking processes, severely testing our patience and prudence."
It was a serviceable definition of the basic art of diplomacy, though not naive. "We are under no illusion that peace and unity will be realized anytime soon," Yang cautioned.
What may be naive is an expectation that the Bush administration, as it marches toward war with Iraq, would draw the broader lessons implicit in the Korean example and in Yang's advice.
The administration's need to learn those lessons is particularly acute at a time when a new global Pew Research Center poll of 38,000 people in 44 countries, including traditional U.S. allies, finds an increasing suspicion of U.S. foreign policy motives.
As painstaking as it can be, diplomatic engagement --"dialogue based on deterrence" -- is at least as important as military engagement.
Even -- or perhaps, especially -- for a superpower.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
For months, President Bush has been heatedly accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of concealing weapons of mass destruction, and Hussein has been heatedly denying the charges. What neither side has provided during this war of words are specific facts, or at least assertions of fact, that can be coolly examined and evaluated. Part of this vacuum may be filled on Saturday, when Iraq is expected to file with the United Nations a long-awaited statement of its weapons arsenal and dual-use programs.
This declaration is one of several things the U.N. Security Council demanded of Iraq on Nov. 8 in Resolution 1441. The declaration is supposed to identify not only all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles and other delivery systems, but any nuclear, biological and chemical programs that Iraq insists have peaceful purposes. ...
Without the facts to back up its accusations, there will likely be an increase in the wave of anti-Americanism that a new survey has found to be on the rise around the world. And unless the administration can make a case with facts, support for a second war in the Persian Gulf -- one more expensive and more ambitious in its goals than the first - could well erode.
By the time they finish their work in late January, U.N. weapons inspectors may have come across a secret weapons factory or laboratory in Iraq. If not, though, the Bush administration ought to hamstring Hussein with its own factual bill of particulars - assuming it's got them.
(Compiled by United Press International)
