Iraq's offer to allow UN weapons inspectors return to Baghdad has presented the US with a dilemma, reports Conor O'Clery from NewYork
"All the reasons for an attack have been eliminated," the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, said in Baghdad after announcing that Iraq would admit UN weapons inspectors again without conditions.
Well, perhaps not, as far as the Bush administration is concerned. The White House has expressed scepticism about the move, citing repeated violations of UN Security Council resolutions over 10 years.
There is no doubt however that the US and Britain have been "extremely tactically discomfited" by Iraq, as a UN diplomat put it yesterday. "America called the UN's bluff, now the UN has called Bush's bluff," he said.
The growing consensus for the US position has been shattered. Up to yesterday there was widespread acknowledgement that, in his speech to the General Assembly on Thursday, President Bush had successfully put it up to the world body that it had to do something about Iraq.
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, even credited Mr Bush for Iraq's reversal of policy, saying appreciatively that the US president had "galvanised the international community" with his speech. In the ensuing days, enormous pressure was put on Iraq by European and Arab countries to avert war in the region by re-admitting inspectors. Now that Iraq has responded, countries such as Russia, a key Security Council member, are saying to the United States: "OK, he's done what we asked, what more do we need?"
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told the Americans yesterday he didn't see any need now for a new Security Council resolution. The US will nevertheless continue to press hard for one which will spell out the consequences if Iraq does not allow unfettered access at any time in any place to any inspector.
They want world backing for a one-strike-and-you-are-out resolution, to have a causus belli if needed with international approval, but they have to rethink their tactics now that the prospect of a resolution imposing a Security Council timetable on admitting inspectors, with the threat of war if not adhered to, has been removed.
THE US is in a dilemma. It risks provoking a wave of anger from the world community if it refuses to accept new inspections and changes the goal posts, especially after Mr Bush made inspections the issue in his speech. As if anticipating a move from Saddam Hussein, Mr Bush left the door open for changing the rules of the game when he cited human rights violations and the issue of prisoners in his speech as other reasons for going after Iraq.
The US Treasury Secretary, Mr Paul O'Neill, restated the true US goal yesterday when he told a morning TV show: "Saddam Hussein has got to go, there's got to be a regime change."
But a regime change, as the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepi, pointed out, is not within the mandate of the United Nations, nor can the US pull the Iraqi statement apart. It has been carefully parsed at the UN and found to contain no hidden pre-conditions, though many governments are extremely sceptical of Iraq's intentions and are under no illusions that the crisis is over.
A road map for the coming weeks will now be drawn up in discussions about the technicalities between the Iraqis and Dr Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector.
"For the Iraqis, that means figuring out how many buses to get to the airport when the inspectors arrive," said a diplomat. For the weapons inspectors it is not so simple. Dr Blix needs hundreds of inspectors who are currently in other jobs. They will have to be recruited, given high-tech equipment and immunisation shots and, once in Iraq, they will have to inspect and re-equip their old headquarters in Baghdad, abandoned in 1998.
THEN the crucial phase begins, seeking unfettered access to such places as the presidential palaces which were a problem during seven years of inspections until 1998. It could be well into next year before such a process is seen to succeed or fail. Whether this means war has been averted until then will depend on what the Bush administration does now.
Iraq's decision makes it more difficult for administration hawks like the Vice President, Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to carry the argment about the need for an attack on Iraq any time soon. They may be regretting that they got involved in the UN in the first place at the insistence of the Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
Already there is considerable domestic scepticism about the motives of the US administration in provoking the crisis at this time, with sceptics noting that it has wiped the stories of corporate scandal and a lethargic economy from the headlines as mid-term elections approach.
Critics recall that Earl Rove, the president's top political adviser, argued earlier this year that the war on terrorism should be part of the Republican campaign, and note that Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, when asked why Iraq had suddenly become important, replied: from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
Bill Clinton is among those who have also voiced doubts about changing the subject from the war on al-Qaeda terrorism. The White House dismisses the Wag the Dog theory (referring to a Hollywood film where a president staged a phoney war to deflect domestic criticism) as absurd.
But it will be harder to convince the American puplic of the need for war, just yet. They will want Iraq's offer to at least be tested.
Conor O'Clery is North America Editor of The Irish Times