Which side is correct? That may be irrelevant as the US will likely disregard whatever the UN decides this week because the threat posed by Iraq is too great as it is. The French, who have one of the five permanent seats on the Security Council, have already said that they would veto a call for military action, all while looking the other way on existing violations.
This seems quite odd. France has wanted the US to drop its support of sanctions against Iraq. France has nearly $4 billion worth of oil contracts with Iraq that would go up in smoke if there is a regime change. The French economy is stuck in neutral and losing the influx of Iraqi money from oil would further slow the economy.
The last few days have seen new revelations that Iraq has been producing weapons that are prohibited and/or failed to report weapons programs.
Case in point:
Its existence was only disclosed in a declassified 173-page document circulated by the inspectors at the end of the meeting - an apparent attempt by Dr Blix to hide the revelation to avoid triggering a war.
It appears that UN bureaucrats are deliberately trying to avert a war, even though Iraq is not in compliance with its demands. The UN, which is supposed to maintain the peace, can only do so if it maintains a credible threat of force against those nations that are in violation of international law. Undermining the credible threat poses tremendous hazards to the future of the UN as an institution.
It is hard to believe that there are many that still do not believe that the Iraqis have chemical or biological weapons, yet many of the same people argue that a US attack would lead to their use (whether by Iraqis or by terrorist organizations against US interests), is dishonest debate at best, and ignorance at worst.
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