Sunday Times
Apart from the predictable response by Saddam Hussein's underlings, there has been overwhelming support for the Iraq strategy set out by George Bush in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. The proposal of setting a deadline for allowing the arms inspectors back into Iraq is backed by 95% of British people in our poll today. A vast majority - eight out of ten - also believe that if Saddam refuses or obstructs the inspectors, force could legitimately be used to overthrow him.
The president's shrewdly judged speech and multilateral approach has clearly worked. Any lingering prevarication seems to have been vaporised by the reality of the threat. Mr Bush was right to emphasise the growing danger from Iraq, reinforced by an assessment the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and the dossier lodged with the UN by the American government. Tony Blair did the same in his speech to the Trades Union Congress. It stood in sharp contrast to the complacency of most of Britain's union leaders, many of whom appear stuck in a pre-Thatcher era, and the knee-kerk opposition that we will doubtless witness when the Liberal Democrats gather in Brighton next week.
The pattern of the next few weeks is now laid out. The UN Security Council will in due course set a deadline for the readmission of arms inspectors. As Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said in his speech to the General Assembly yesterday, the international community must not stand by and do nothing while Saddam "persistently mocked" the UN. "It is the responsibility of all of us here to ensure that the legitimacy, the authority and the capacity of the UN to preserve peace and to build prosperity is strengthened, not undermined," he said.
It is hard predicting the unpreditable, but Saddam is likely to refuse, then dodge, then protest, but eventually agree to negotiate to allow the inspectors back in. At that point it will get really messy. Iraq will push for the removal of UN sanctions as a condition for the readmission of inspectors. It will want to set terms that fall well sort of the open and unrestricted access that America and the world will be demanding. Seemingly conciliatory vices, such as Russia, will argue that the inspectors should be given a year to seek out and destroy chemical and biological weapons and potential nuclear capacity. And if the inspectors are admitted, how long before it is plan that the Iraqi regime is preventing them from doing the job? Would it require, as in 1998, the outright expulsion of the inspectors? It should be plain that Saddam was up to his old tricks long before that, but there are still voices who would rather that we did nothing.
The danger now that the ball has been thrown back into the UN's court is that it provides an excuse for delay, something Saddam is skilled at exploiting. America will have to decide how long it is prepared to allow that process to go on. It is unlikely that all the big powers will agree on the timing. There will be no clear-cut international rallying call for actioni. Nor will the coalition be as broad as it was during the Gulf war of 1990-91; Arab states and some western countries, including Germany, will lie low. The question in a few weeks' time will be the same as now: should America take action to remove the danger of Saddam and does Britain support that action? The answer in both cases should be yes, whether or not other countries choose to join.
The danger of related terrorism remains, of course. But we should celebrate progress in that war. Ramzi Binalshibh, identified in this newspaper last week as one of the masterminds behind last year's September 11 atrocities, has been arrested in Pakistan. Other senior Al-Qaeda figures are gradually being picked up around the world. That does not mean the war against Islamic terrorism has been won - our poll picks up on the widespread belief that it can never be won. If that fatalism is based on a grim pessimism, it does not mean that a concerted effort by the West and its Muslim allies will not be able to contain terrorism until it is ultimately defeated.
