Yesterday's reports that UN arms inspectors provided the US with intelligence on the security apparatus protecting President Saddam Hussein, can be expected to spur on Baghdad's ongoing campaign to rid Iraq of constraints imposed on the country after the 1991 Gulf war.
The reports, published in the Washington Post and Boston Globe bolster Baghdad's case against the resumption of the UN Special Commission's disarmament work in Iraq on the ground that the inspectors acted as "spies" for the US. Iraq's demand that US and British citizens should be withdrawn from UN humanitarian teams has also been strengthened. On the regional front, the revelations acutely embarrass Arab leaders who have either gone along with or assisted the US effort to "keep Saddam in his box".
So long as the disarmament effort was perceived by the Arab public as a neutral UN vehicle, it was tolerated by Arab public opinion.
But now that Iraq's spy accusations are widely seen to have been proven true, the entire UN involvement in Iraq has lost credibility and is being perceived as a means to topple Mr Saddam rather than preserve peace in the Gulf.
Arabs who have long objected to what they see as the victimisation of Iraq through ostracism, punitive economic sanctions and the imposition of "no fly" zones, have come to agree with the Iraqi leader that he is being targeted because he is the sole independent voice in the Arab world.
Aware of the direction in which opinion is developing, Mr Saddam broadcast to the Arabs via a satellite link on Tuesday, exhorting them to "revolt and unseat those stooges, collaborators, dwarf rulers and cowards" who support the US in its campaign to contain Iraq.
Although he did not name names it was clear that the Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, and Jordan's King Hussein were amongst this company along with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Gulf states which permit the US to use bases on their territory to fly missions over the southern "no-fly" zone which Iraq is also challenging with its own warplanes as an infringement of its sovereignty. An Iraqi analyst told The Irish Times Mr Saddam "has no choice" but to challenge the post-war regime imposed on his country. "He will go on militarily and verbally provoking" his antagonists "because he is being offered no way out".
Reuters adds:
US and British air strikes last month flattened an agricultural school, damaged at least a dozen other schools and hospitals and knocked out water supplies for 300,000 people in Baghdad, according to a preliminary report by UN agencies issued yesterday. The survey by UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, and the World Food Programme (WFP) concentrated mainly on health and educational facilities affected by US and British air strikes against Iraq three weeks ago.
It was the first such report from UN officials on the ground in Iraq. The WFP said a missile destroyed a large storehouse filled with 2,600 tonnes of rice in Tikrit, President Saddam's home town, 100 miles (160 km) north of Baghdad. In Baghdad, UNICEF said there was broken glass, doors and other damage at a maternity hospital, a teaching hospital and an out-patients' clinic in Saddam Medical City.
Parts of the Health Ministry were also damaged, including windows, walls, doors and electrical wiring and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs received a direct hit with two guards seriously injured, the report said.
