S AFRICA/IRAQ: South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Aziz Pahad, has left for Iraq on a mission to persuade President Saddam Hussein to co-operate fully with UN weapons inspectors - as South Africa did in the early 1990s - to demonstrate to their satisfaction that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, writes Patrick Laurence, in Johannesburg
His mission was greeted with derision from the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, one of whose leaders described Mr Pahad's trip as "political tourism" and the ANC-led government of "cosying up" to Saddam's dictatorial regime.
The Democratic Alliance had earlier contrasted the ANC's failure to criticise Saddam with the sharp words directed as President Bush and his Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, by its official spokesman, Mr Smuts Ngonyama, and its elder statesman, Mr Nelson Mandela.
While South Africa, as a middle-ranking regional power, is a minuscule player in a situation of grave potential danger for the world, two factors combine to increase it leverage. President Thabo Mbeki, at whose behest Mr Pahad has undertaken the mission, carries additional weight because he is the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement and of the African Union.
South Africa is one of only three countries with nuclear weapons to have voluntarily disarmed; moreover, its co-operation with inspectors from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was specifically cited by Dr Hans Blix, who heads the UN weapons monitoring team in Iraq, as a model for Iraq to follow.
Between 1974 and 1991, South Africa secretly pursued a nuclear weapons programme. By the time Mr F.W. de Klerk took office in September 1990 as president, it had manufactured six nuclear weapons and was in the process of completing a seventh.
In 1991, however, Mr De Klerk decided to dismantle the weapons and the nuclear weapons industry which had generated them.
Major factors were thought to be his aim of normalising South Africa's standing as a country whose nuclear industry was devoted to the generation of power for peaceful ends and the desire to deprive the incoming ANC government - its eventual political victory seemed inevitable, even then - of access to nuclear weapons.
In July 1991, South Africa signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; that November, IAEA inspectors were shown around two nuclear power complexes at Pelindaba and Valindaba, although signatories to the treaty were not obliged to disclose details of the past construction of weapons.
The inspectors remained sceptical, however, particularly about "Building 5000" near Pretoria where the major development of nuclear weapons had occurred.
Much of the dismantling took place ironically during the 1991 Gulf War. In March 1993, Mr De Klerk announced that all of South Africa's nuclear weapons had been dismantled. The documentation of the weapons-making process was reportedly destroyed as well.
The IAEA insisted, however, on inspecting Building 5000 and related buildings in the secret Advena complex. They were invited to do so and were free to question the scientists who worked on weapons production and destruction.