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The Fine Print

© lawhawk

The UN and Iraq reached an agreement earlier this week that, for the moment, stemmed a possible attack by the United States, Britain and several other countries wary of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program. Iraq continues to claim that it no longer has these capabilities and the US and Britain are grandstanding and warmongering against Iraq even though there isn't any proof that the Iraqi government is hiding weapons production facilities.

The agreement brokered by General Secretary Kofi Annan states that Iraq must open eight presidential palaces to UN Arms Inspectors and that failure to do so would result in penalties. The agreement suggests that Iraq may be able to stall inspectors and do things that may not live up to the spirit of the agreement although they are abiding by the letter of the agreement.

I'm sure that many of us have bought something that required a contract, (a car or a house for example). Those purchases involved documents that had real small print that assigned liabilities and delegated duties to the parties of the contracts. It also spelled out the damages should one of the parties breach. Generally disputes are handled in court, but in the international arena, courts have little power to enforce judgments so that force or embargoes are necessary.

The document signed by Iraq is no different and the question is, what will happen should Iraq fail to live up to this agreement? We will have to see how the UN handles the next crisis when Iraq chooses to hold up inspections. The US should also look at other alternatives, including allowing other countries to conduct the arms inspections. Although US expertise at this task is undisputed, the very background that these individuals have is called into question every time the inspectors want to approach a site suspected to contain these illegal weapons.

In other news, the Israeli government continues to struggle with the implementation of the Oslo accords and renewed violence is threatened by the Palestinian Authority. Actually the Palestinian Authority continues to say that they are against the violence, but they can understand if the violence occurs. This implausible deniability has eroded the faith of many that the Palestinian Authority can effectively manage the task of developing a peaceful resolution. Israel for its part has to see that its actions are not isolated but part of a larger scheme and that it may jeopardize its long term position by taking short sighted positions in the near term.