Iraqi Sanctions Not Likely To End Soon Weapons Inspectors Resume Their Work After Standoff

Bolstered by a strong endorsement from U.N. weapons experts, American officials stressed Sunday that Iraq has no hope of seeing economic sanctions lifted as long as it balks at total access for inspectors trying to ferret out biological and chemical weapons.

“It is clear that there is a massive amount of work that has to be done there, especially in the chemical and biological inspection areas,” President Clinton said in Vancouver, British Columbia, at a trade summit of Pacific Rim nations. Clinton said he is determined that weapons inspectors be free to carry out their mission.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in Vancouver with Clinton for the Asia Pacific Economic Conference, said “we expect there will be firm action to compel compliance” if Iraq resists.

“It is very clear that they have not complied with Security Council resolutions,” she said.

Baghdad’s United Nations ambassador countered that sanctions should be lifted now. The Iraqis have destroyed their weapons themselves, he said.

“The sanctions will stay in place. There is no hope of them being lifted” so long as Iraq continues to obstruct weapons instructors and ignore other U.N. resolutions imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Defense Secretary William Cohen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“They are nowhere close on any front. So we don’t see sanctions being lifted. There’s absolutely no reason to do that,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

U.N. weapons inspectors resumed their work in Iraq Saturday after a three-week standoff sparked by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s demand that Americans be removed from the team and contention that sanctions crippling Iraq’s economy be ended.

On Sunday the roughly 75 U.N. monitors, including four Americans, fanned out around Baghdad as helicopter crews overhead watched for suspicious activity on the ground. Inspection team chief Nils Carlstrom refused to say what they were finding but said the Iraqis were cooperating.

U.S. officials have emphasized the crisis is not over because Iraq continues to withhold access to 63 sites, including Saddam’s 47 presidential compounds. Cohen spoke of a “pattern of deception and lies, deceits and cover-ups” including concealment of biological and chemical weapons.