MIDDLE EAST: Arab leaders and commentators who have been urging Baghdad to readmit weapons inspectors criticised the United States yesterday for "changing the rules of the game" as soon as Iraq reached an agreement in Vienna on the return of UN weapons inspectors.
Egyptian analyst Muhammad al-Saeed Idriss, commenting in al-Khaleej, the leading Arabic daily in the United Arab Emirates, said Washington was trying to "browbeat the Security Council into accepting its resolution" on Iraq .
Jalal al-Mashta, writing in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily, al-Hayat, condemned the US draft resolution, which puts "the onus on Iraq to prove its innocence" rather than on the inspectors to find any hidden weaponry.
The US resolution would undermine Iraq's sovereignty in various ways, including by requiring expatriate Iraqi scientists and experts to be questioned by the inspectors, he said. By providing for the use of force under a variety of circumstances, the resolution would leave the US "sword permanently unsheathed".
Hasan Abu Nimah, a former senior Jordanian diplomat, warned in the Jordan Times: "The UN's job is to enforce law, not license aggression."
He continued: "The hope was that by handing the case over to the UN, the planned American action against Iraq would have to go through the checkpoints and safeguards of international law, and would only be authorised when deemed compatible and objectively necessary."
The London Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi suspects that the leaders of Syria and Egypt, who met on Monday, are trying to "straddle the fence" rather than ensure that the inspectors return to Iraq under a UN mandate acceptable to Iraq and the region.
