FRANCE: An optimistic assessment of the disarmament of Iraq was given in Paris yesterday by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Mr Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister.
"We assume that we will continue to make progress," Mr ElBaradei said. "We assume that Iraq hopefully will continue to co-operate. We assume that we will get the necessary time to disarm Iraq by peaceful means."
Dr ElBaradei is on a tour of capitals of the permanent members of the UN Security Council before he and Dr Hans Blix, the head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) travel to Baghdad on January 19th and 20th to "impress upon them the need to be more pro-active in their relations with the inspectors".
Dr Blix will see President Jacques Chirac on January 17th.
Both Dr ElBaradei and Mr Villepin stressed that the presence of weapons inspectors "freezes" the possibility of Iraq working on weapons programmes.
"But we want more," Mr Villepin added. "We want the assurance that Iraq has not, in the course of the last few years, been able to obtain such weapons."
Both reiterated an appeal to the US to provide any evidence it has to the weapons inspectors. The IAEA relies on member-states for satellite photos and intelligence information, as well as political and financial support.
The head of the IAEA said he and Mr Villepin were "in full agreement over the need to give inspection a chance to run its full course". French officials are searching for a way out of what they see as Washington's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attitude. If inspectors come up empty-handed, the French fear Washington will claim Baghdad is hiding weapons. But if they discover hidden documents or elements of a weapons programme, the Bush administration could seize on that as a pretext for war.
Yet the date for a military intervention has constantly slipped further into the future, with Washington now saying it will not have the 250,000 men it requires in theatre until mid-February.
One theory here is that French insistence on giving a chance to weapons inspectors serves US interests, by filling time until the US military build-up in the Persian Gulf is complete. It was long thought the US might strike after January 27th, when Messrs Blix and ElBaradei will submit a status report to the Security Council. But the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, and Drs Blix and ElBaradei now say the 27th is in no way a deadline or cut-off date.
Dr ElBaradei said the one-year period mentioned by an IAEA spokesman yesterday was an outside estimate. He and Mr Villepin evaded questions as to whether they included Washington in assertions that the Security Council was willing to give weapons inspectors the time they require.
"We still need a few months to achieve our mission," Dr ElBaradei continued. "How long this will take depends on the co-operation we get from Iraq in terms of documents, interviews and physical evidence."
It is unlikely the US would initiate a conflict in the Gulf after March, when the weather begins to get hot. Dr ElBaradei alluded to the US only once, saying that "the international community is getting impatient that after 11 years we have not yet brought to a closure this file about Iraqi disarmament".
There was, he added, "a good deal of anxiousness to finish our job, and achieve our mission as soon as possible". Dr ElBaradei said North Korea's withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was "of equal concern" to the Iraq situation. In consultations with Security Council members, he added, "everybody is ready to look sympathetically to North Korea's security concerns and need for economic assistance, but once North Korea has come back into compliance."
As the French foreign minister left the press conference, an Arab journalist asked him to save the Middle East from war. "You can count on us," Mr Villepin said.
Pope John Paul condemned the possibility of a war in Iraq, saying it could be avoided and that it would be a defeat for humanity. He made clear his opposition in his annual "State of the World" address to diplomats .
"No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity," he said. "And what are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than 12 years of embargo?," he said
