It is likely that this week will determine whether or not the crisis over United Nations arms inspections in Iraq can be resolved by diplomatic means. It is very much to be hoped that it can be and that all concerned will give the maximum opportunity for the compromises involved to get a proper hearing. If diplomacy fails it will be difficult to prevent the coalition led by the United States and Britain conducting air strikes against Iraqi targets to force compliance, even if it lacks the authority of a new Security Council mandate to do so and remains open to the criticism that such retaliation is ill-defined and could make a bad situation worse.
A heavy responsibility falls on the Iraqi government to respond constructively to the demand that UN arms inspectors be given the freedom to implement their mandate to discover and destroy weapons of mass destruction. There can be no arguing with the legal validity of this mandate nor with its political and military necessity. Quite sufficient evidence has accumulated that Iraq has been manufacturing chemical and biological weapons of awesome destructiveness to merit the most careful and determined effort to ensure they are disarmed and destroyed. If this is to be done there must be access to the sites which has so far been denied.
The compromise formula suggested by France, Russia and the Arab League last week, according to which diplomats would accompany the established teams of UN arms inspectors and report directly to the Security Council itself, is worthy of further investigation. While it is unacceptable that Iraq should attach conditions to the substantive investigation, there should be room for accommodating its concerns about protecting sovereignty from espionage masquerading as UN inspection. It is likely that anything agreed will fall short of the absolute guarantees demanded by the US and Britain; but it will be up to France and its Security Council supporters to steer it through.
Over the weekend it has become clear that an opening still exists for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, has asserted his authority by sending a team to Baghdad to map out disputed sites and has prepared the ground for a visit himself this week to the Iraqi capital. He would need to be satisfied that an honourable agreement is genuinely available before embarking - and it will be up to those who have pressed most strongly for a diplomatic outcome to ensure that it is, in order to uphold the UN's own stature and role, as distinct from those of the states within the Security Council most determined on military action.
Unless Iraq is prepared to make genuine concessions about the terms of reference and access to disputed sites it is difficult to see how such an agreement can be put in place. If its government is genuinely interested in seeing an end to this crisis it should not have too much trouble making them this week.