Politics has taken over from arms inspection as the determining factor in the Iraq crisis following yesterday's session of the United Nations Security Council. The two arms inspectors delivered matter-of-fact and relatively upbeat reports on the progress of their work. Dr Hans Blix said it would take "not years nor weeks but months" to complete his tasks, while Dr Mohamed ElBaredei has found little or no evidence for an Iraqi nuclear arms programme.
The United States and Britain declared Iraq has failed to show a readiness to comply. France, Germany, Russia and China demanded more time for it to disarm.
Politics will determine the issue over coming days. The British decision yesterday to amend the Security Council resolution they have tabled by introducing a deadline for Iraqi compliance of March 17th, St Patrick's Day, makes sense only if there are enough votes to pass it. It would give political cover to what would be an effective authorisation for war.
Intense lobbying will precede the vote on this resolution next Tuesday. It may not be put if there are not enough votes to pass it - and this will depend a great deal on behind-the-scenes activity over the next four days. And even if it receives the necessary support, France announced yesterday it will not allow a resolution to pass which facilitates an automatic resort to war. Presumably this means France will veto a successful resolution. But in his press conference on Thursday night President Bush made it clear he has decided to go to war whatever the outcome of the UN process. He would much prefer a peaceful outcome, but will not be deterred from military action by a UN failure to agree.
Yesterday's Security Council debate concerned not only political assessment of Iraqi compliance but the regional and global consequences of a resort to war. The Middle East region would be destabilised, international terrorism bolstered, relations between Christian and Islamic societies radically disimproved, and efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict set back; these were among the principal arguments deployed. They add up to a formidable case against going to war, even if the evidence of Iraqi compliance was weaker than it is, judged on the evidence put to the Security Council.
The fresh documentation on Iraqi disarmament published yesterday indicates how grudging and belated, but nonetheless real, Iraqi compliance has been. Everyone involved agrees this has been made possible by the deployment of US and British forces and the determination to use them. But there remains an entirely understandable reluctance among most of the Security Council members to make the political judgment that the time has come to abandon pressure for disarmament and resort to war. To agree with that is to say, with President Bush and Mr Colin Powell yesterday, that Iraq threatens the region and the world. That case is not proven. On the balance of the arguments, the political case for giving more time for Iraq to disarm is much the stronger one.