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Baghdad's Negotiating Position Emerges
November 13, 2002
Odai Hussein, the elder son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, has recommended that Iraq should launch military action against the United States if diplomatic efforts with the United Nations fail, according to Agence France Presse. Yet he also recommended that the Iraqi parliament accept the recent U.N. Security Council resolution on weapons inspections, provided the inspections team included Arabs. Instead, parliament voted unanimously to reject the resolution, though the Iraqi president himself still has the final say.
This duality is part of Baghdad's emerging negotiating position. On one hand, Odai's statements underlined the fact that rejection of the Nov. 8 U.N. resolution will mean war, and perhaps not the war of Washington's choosing -- but by hinting that only a few slight modifications to the resolution would avert war, Iraq seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies.
For most European leaders, such changes would be a small price to pay to avoid a war. For the Bush administration, however, regime change through war is the actual goal.
While the Iraqi tactic is intelligent, the fact that the U.N. resolution requires a response from Baghdad by Nov. 15 greatly limits the room that either Iraq or the European states have to maneuver. Moscow, Madrid and Berlin already have called upon Baghdad to accept the resolution in full, while Paris and London have caveated similar calls with an "or else" -- explicitly backing up the ultimatum with the threat of force.
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(c) 2002 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
Baghdad's Negotiating Position Emerges . . .