Still, Annan was clearly in the doghouse at Bill Clinton’s White House. The brouhaha marked what may be a new level of estrangement between the United Nations and its once proud parent, the United States. By the weekend, in an effort to take control of the embarrassing story, Clinton administration officials leaked volumes about U.S. intelligence operations, usually the most closely guarded of state secrets. Sure, we spied on Iraq, using sophisticated listening devices, they said, but we always did so to assist UNSCOM in its mandate to ferret out Iraq’s weapons secrets. ““At no time did the U.S. work with anyone at UNSCOM to collect information for the purpose of undermining the Iraqi regime,’’ said State Department spokesman James Rubin.
Intelligence sources told NEWSWEEK that in the early ’90s the CIA did consider using UNSCOM as a cover for its spies. But the proposal was vetoed by senior officials at Langley precisely because it might compromise the U.N.’s integrity. In 1996, however, UNSCOM itself requested Washington’s technical assistance, after which the U.S. effectively took over the operation. Some of the UNSCOM material, of course, ended up at CIA headquarters. ““Shocking, shocking that we were collecting intelligence,’’ joked a CIA officer. And U.S. officials conceded that the agency passed UNSCOM data on to the Pentagon to help target last month’s ““Desert Fox’’ strikes.
The White House saw the Washington Post story as a less-than-subtle attempt by U.N. officials to unseat Richard Butler, the tough, blunt-spoken head of UNSCOM. Butler, under attack by Saddam as too intrusive in his inspections, has long denied that he is a tool of U.S. interests. Now he looked like one. ““There’s no question there’s a deliberate effort to do him in,’’ said a senior administration official. ““I think it’s a combination of some of Iraq’s friends on the [Security] Council and some of the people in Kofi’s office, who clearly feel they need to get past Butler.’’ Some at the U.N. want to reconstitute UNSCOM without Butler, making the inspection unit more acceptable to the Iraqis. Saddam refused to allow UNSCOM back in after the airstrikes, and only by letting the inspectors return can he get economic sanctions lifted. Annan’s people may also want to distance the U.N. from Washington now that the U.S. is openly seeking Saddam’s removal. The secretary-general, after all, can hardly condone the use of U.N. organs to overthrow a member state.
Yet for Annan, parting company with his most powerful sponsor is a dangerous game, as he knows better than anyone. ““The question of bad relations with the U.S. is unthinkable,’’ Annan told NEWSWEEK. And late last week he voiced repeated support for Butler. (For his part, Butler insists his relationship with Annan is ““stellar.’’) At the same time, the secretary-general is under pressure from other countries to be his own man, especially since the United States reneged on at least $1 billion in U.N. back dues. Annan’s backers complain that the Clinton administration, preoccupied with the impeachment crisis, gives him too little credit for trying to find a way through the Iraq morass. ““To shore up their position they [Washington] have attacked Kofi as an appeaser, when he’s really being a problem-solver,’’ says an aide.
Still, Washington is hardly free to do just as it pleases. If Clinton is increasingly going his own way on the U.N., the U.S. still needs the U.N.’s cover to apply international sanctions against Saddam if he survives Washington’s attempts to weaken him and create conditions for a coup. This split-screen strategy was on full display last week. On one hand, U.S. officials played up the damage done to Saddam by Desert Fox. Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni said Friday that the strikes actually will cost him two years’ worth of repairs instead of one (the previous estimate). Zinni and others portrayed a disorganized and demoralized Iraqi regime; in the rebellious south, Iraqi officers were executed for refusing to obey Saddam’s crackdown orders, they said. Intelligence reports suggest Saddam may be at his weakest point since the gulf war.
But the administration was just as eager to boast that it was not alone. The Iraqi leader ““has rarely, if ever, been as isolated internationally and in the Arab world as he is today,’’ said Rubin. Last week, in a remarkable display of stridency, Saddam lashed out at Arab leaders, especially Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, whose state media in turn called for the Iraqi’s ouster. He is showing ““a degree of desperation that we hadn’t seen before,’’ said Zinni.
Saddam, however, has made a career of defying predictions of his imminent doom. If he endures this time, the U.S.-U.N. rift could well grow deeper. Clinton, who came into office preaching a new multilateralism, increasingly sees the U.N. Security Council as a forum used by weak powers like Russia to puff themselves up. Annan, sensing the danger, tried to make amends with Albright again on Thursday. ““I hope we are behind this,’’ he said. ““I want to make sure that the U.N. and the U.S. aren’t going in different directions.’’ Not yet, perhaps, but the strains are showing.
