LONDON – The much-heralded council of war between President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair begins at Bush’s Texas ranch on Friday. Whatever else is in the headlines on that day, the tight focus of the discussion will be on whether or not to go to war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

This must be the most complicated, multifaceted, decision that any Western political leader has made since Truman’s decision to go to war against North Korea. Yet, even if one concedes the ultimate right of any country to take preventive action against another, which might use nuclear weapons against it, the argument for a new war does not stand up.

Despite America’s overwhelming military might, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Until now the U.S, by its bold and resolute, if misconceived, war in Afghanistan has proved the doubters wrong on one important point. The Arab (and Muslim) street has not risen up in mass anger. Repelled by American military action it obviously is, if the reporting and polls are correct, but prepared for action it is not. In a noteworthy remark at the Arab League summit last week the Saudi foreign minister observed there had been no flight of Arab volunteers to join the ranks of the Palestinian intifada, the most ready cause for which the headstrong could show their distaste for American policies.

Yet the Intifada is hotting up. Israel has now declared war on Palestine. To assume that America and Britain could get away with a confrontation with the prejudices and yearnings of the Arab street a second time would be an act of hubris and supreme folly. Just this week there have been the first clashes between anti-Israeli demonstrators and the Egyptian police. Amazingly, there still seems no real effort in Washington to rein in Sharon’s militaristic impulses or to take initiatives that could give real negotiating life to the path breaking peace proposals of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Yet without that the ground could never be laid for consensus among America’s Middle East allies about invading Iraq.

Yet even if such considerations are put on one side in the name of doing what has to be done before it is too late, the question is then begged, does it HAVE to be done? According to Scott Ritter, the former American head of the United Nations Special Commission’s concealment unit, charged with disarming Iraq, “it was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, from a strictly qualitative standpoint, Iraq had been disarmed of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and that “as long as monitoring inspections remained in place Iraq presented a WMD-based threat to no one.”

Before we conveniently forget our recent history we should recall what led to the expulsion of the UN monitors- because Washington could never bring itself to cease saying that only the removal from power of Saddam Hussein would lead to the end of sanctions. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, as far as Saddam was concerned. America has long boxed itself in from finding a way to resolve its various disputes with Iraq by demanding the one thing that those in power in Baghdad will never concede. And meanwhile, with the UN inspectors thrown out of the country, the research on WMD has proceeded. How far have Iraq’s scientists gone? And what would Saddam do with them if he developed such weapons?

Progress, given the application of sanctions and the degree of destruction of facilities brought about by the Gulf War and the follow up action of the UN inspectorate can hardly have been fast. Most of Iraq’s sophisticated state of the art planes, incidentally sold it by western arms merchants with the full connivance of the governments, were either destroyed in the war or fled to Iran. The air force that Iraq boasts today is a poor shadow of what it had and its pilots are ill trained, desperately short of flying hours. As for its small stock of Scud missiles, they are not adapted with the sophisticated warheads that would enable them to carry WMD. Yet at the end of the argument the critic has to concede that one day Saddam Hussein may have such weapons and may be motivated to find a way by suitcase, boat or whatever to smuggle one into New York or Tel Aviv.

But we have been through this once before. With North Korea. President Bill Clinton was forced to look down the barrel of a gun and find that the prospect of war with a perhaps nuclear-armed North Korea was too terrible to contemplate. Former president Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang and saved America’s bacon with a deal that satisfied both sides. In its own way it was as dangerous a situation as the Cuban missile crisis and was resolved the same way. More recently, America and Britain have successfully dealt with Libyan terrorism by persistent negotiation.

What issues are so intractable that they can’t be negotiated with Saddam Hussein? No one since the Gulf War has seriously tried. It would require a 180 turnaround by both London and Washington. But sometimes in politics that is what leaders are elected to do.

I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com

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