Interventions

by Kofi Annan

  The next Monday morning I received calls from Clinton and Albright within an hour of each other. They had clearly decided that it was the day to send me a tough message—not least for domestic political reasons. I could sense that Clinton had just been given an overall briefing of the Iraq problem, because he began with an overview and then got to his point of saying that he wanted a diplomatic solution as much as I did, but that it had to be principled and have integrity. I assured Clinton that that was precisely the point of my initiative—to ensure the continuing lead of UNSCOM in all inspections under its executive chairman. But, by adding new diplomats to each of the teams we could give the Iraqis something that represented respect for their own dignity, but which in no way impeded the effectiveness of the inspections.

  Albright, as always, went straight to the point: “Everyone here is concerned about whether you really got the message about how firm we are,” and I replied, “Absolutely, I know the stakes and the mood in the nation and the other party.” I explained that the solution was simple: the new inspections team would be headed by an UNSCOM commissioner and would be staffed by permanent staff of UNSCOM and IAEA, and directed by Butler, the executive chairman of UNSCOM. Additional members of a diplomatic background would be appointed jointly by myself and Butler. Unconvinced, Albright resorted to the kind of warning with which I would soon become familiar: “We won’t hesitate to say that a deal with Iraq was a lousy one if that proved to be the case.”

  —

  I resolved to go to Baghdad and on the Sunday before my mission, Albright came up to New York and met me at the residence of the secretary-general to give me her “red lines,” her final demands that all sites must be accessible, and for multiple visits, without time limits. None of these were a surprise or a problem for me, and I also knew that the purpose of her visit had as much to do with internal U.S. politics as with the mission itself. For the Clinton administration that meant, on many occasions, needing to seem tough with the UN. She even asked if I would go “even if we wouldn’t want it.” I told her that I would be going to Baghdad with a strong consensus from the Council that Iraq must return to compliance—but I would also be preparing my own negotiating points. I had to remind her of my role as secretary-general, answerable to 191 other member states and of our duty to seek peaceful resolution of disputes.

  On arrival in Baghdad, I was met on the tarmac by foreign minister Tariq Aziz and some two hundred journalists from around the world who had been allowed into the country by the Iraqis to highlight the talks. I was then driven to a large white guesthouse where my team and I prepared for the next days’ talks. Sitting amid the splendor (however kitsch) of Saddam’s houses, I could not help thinking of the waste and abuse of it all, and how an entire generation of Iraqis had been denied the opportunities of prosperity, dignity, and freedom for the sake of one man’s grip on power.

  I knew that what the Iraqi regime sought was a sense of dignity and respect throughout this process. This was not so different from the Chinese tradition of emphasis on not losing face. I had learned from my own experience of negotiating with Iraqis and from the advice of aides such as Lakhdar Brahimi that such dignity could be a matter of life and death—however trumped up or manufactured it might seem to be in Western eyes. To those who would ask why Saddam should be shown any respect or dignity—and that achieving mutual trust with a tyrant was an affront to his many victims—I could reply only that this was my task. As long as the international community was committed to an inspection regime requiring Iraq’s cooperation, how else were we going to obtain it?

  We then entered negotiations with the Iraqi team led by Aziz. From this meeting, which lasted until two in the morning, I had a sense that we would be able to agree on a resumption of inspections. But it was clear that only one man could authorize it: Saddam. We were left in the dark about whether—and when—a meeting with Saddam would take place. Shortly before noon the next day a cortege of cars suddenly appeared to take me to meet with him. When we entered one of his palaces, I found that he had changed out of his usual military fatigues into a navy-blue suit—an indication it seemed of his understanding of the need to show at least the outward signs of diplomacy.

  We sat down together on the lush, gold-rimmed seats of a reception room. He was careful and correct in his manners and anchored by a deep and confident calm at all times. He was almost serene, exhibiting in his personal character the untouchable status he had long held in Iraq.

  My objective was clear: to obtain Saddam’s agreement to a resumption of inspection by giving him a ladder to climb down from his position of defiance. In the absence of any way to force him to concede, I set out to build a basis for agreement by appealing to his sense of pride in building Iraq into a modern state and the need to protect it from further harm. I opened by seeking to appeal to his sense of responsibility for the fate of his country—including his vanity as a leader. I recounted the wars Iraq had been through and said, “Mr. President, you are a builder. You have spent years building and rebuilding Iraq following war.” I stressed my recognition of how far they had come in rebuilding their society after so much destruction—which of course he had been responsible for. Then I urged him to avoid all of this progress being set back over a dispute over palaces. “You say you have no weapons in the palaces,” I said. “In that case, open the doors and let the inspectors go and see for themselves.” Halfway through the conversation, he said, “Excuse me; I have to go and pray.” Once I was alone with his interpreter, I turned to him and asked: “Am I getting through to him?” “Yes,” he replied, “Yes. Yes.” He was clearly relieved, hoping that this would avoid another war.

  When Saddam returned, he thanked me and praised my courage, adding that “I know powerful people did not want you to come.” Stating that he trusted me, he authorized his team to complete the draft agreement and we received his approval by midnight. Before saying good-bye, I urged Saddam not to push each issue or dispute to a crisis point but instead to call me to discuss his concerns so we could avoid a repetition of this incident. He looked at the phone at his side, and then at me, and said, “That thing, I never touch it.” He was clearly concerned about more than whether the phone could be tapped.

  The agreement secured Iraq’s commitment to providing “immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access” to UNSCOM, providing we followed a set of special procedures when accessing eight presidential sites to address Saddam’s requests for dignity and respect by including diplomats, and not just technical experts, in inspection teams.

  On my return to UN headquarters in New York, I emphasized to the press that this was a case study in what diplomacy backed by force could achieve—that you show force in order not to use it. “You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.”

  When I took some questions from the assembled reporters I learned my first, hard lesson about the nature of public diplomacy—and the uses and abuses of my words. In answer to a simple question about the deal with Saddam, I stated what I thought was the obvious and replied that he was a man I could do business with—as I evidently just had. Of course, looking back today, I can see how this could be misconstrued not only as approving of his character but also as a lack of skepticism regarding Iraq’s commitment to upholding this agreement and the tyrannical nature of his regime.

  Just as the means had to be diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force, the ends were clear: Iraq’s full compliance with all Security Council resolutions, the disarmament of Iraq, reintegrating its people into the international community, securing the stability of the Gulf region, and ensuring the effectiveness of the United Nations as a guarantor of international peace and security. No secretary-general has the luxury of choosing whom to engage with to achieve these objectives—in the case of Iraq and elsewhere.

  Sitting down with leaders such as Saddam—or Bashir of Sudan or Gadhafi of Libya—is a re
sponsibility you cannot shirk given what you’re trying to achieve. You need to deal with those who can make a difference, those who can stop the bloodshed. You have to talk to the leaders, and get them to find a way to end the killing. Otherwise, how do you accomplish it? I also believed that such leaders could be engaged on a range of levels and motivations, however selfish, that I could turn to the benefit of a broader mission for peace. If you don’t try it you won’t ever know. You have to test it. The stakes are so high that you do not have the luxury of saying. “I’m not going to talk to this guy. I’m not going to shake his hand.” By doing that you may be condemning thousands and millions to their deaths or further persecution. I’m trying to get them to do the right thing. I may fail—but I have a responsibility to try, to test it.

  To the Security Council, which I met with shortly after the press conference, I was explicit about the risks. Reminding them that I had conducted the mission with the full authorization of the Council and that I had restored full and unlimited access for UNSCOM and strengthened its position with the Iraqis, I placed the onus of execution squarely on the Iraqi authorities. “I am under no illusions about the inherent value of this or any other agreement. Commitments honored are the only commitments that count . . . This agreement tests as never before the will of the Iraqi leadership to keep its word . . . If this effort to ensure compliance through negotiations is obstructed by evasion or deception, diplomacy may not have a second chance.” I knew that what Iraq craved most—dignity and respect—could be demonstrated by a well-prepared set of negotiations that would result in a degree of mutual trust.

  What was also critical was that the Iraqis be given a sense of light at the end of the tunnel; not, as critics complained, because any of us were soft on Saddam or wished to give him a way out, but because we knew that such an intrusive inspection regime required an incentive for Iraq to cooperate. Otherwise, why would they continue to allow a degree of scrutiny without precedent? And of course casual talk at that time in Washington of never lifting sanctions on Saddam, no matter what, did not help matters. The United States and its allies were entitled to state this position as a matter of national interest. However, they could not expect to have a United Nations committed to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq to simply play along. Nor could they have been unaware that this gave Saddam the excuse to tell the rest of the world that the game was fixed no matter what he did. We needed the inspections to work toward resolving the ongoing crisis with Iraq. Until then, the Gulf War would not truly be over.

  The Council unanimously endorsed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) I had negotiated with Saddam. Even Butler went on television to say that if the agreement was faithfully implemented by Iraq, it would provide the basis for UNSCOM to carry out its work successfully. That, of course, had been the premise of negotiations all along.

  My mission to Baghdad early on in my tenure demonstrated the possibilities available to a secretary-general if one was willing to intervene when diplomacy through other avenues had failed. The agreement bought us six further months of inspections—although they would prove difficult and acrimonious almost from the beginning.

  —

  Matters came to a head in early August 1998. UNSCOM was characterized by a growing impression of unaccountable and undisciplined inspections. Butler called me on the afternoon of August 3 to brief me on his meetings with Tariq Aziz that day. The Iraqis had clearly taken a strategic decision to force the issue: they had told Butler that he must tell the Security Council immediately that Iraq had been disarmed; that it did not possess any more weapons of mass destruction; and therefore a decision on sanctions could and should be taken. When Butler replied—correctly in this case—that he was unable to do so absent further verification, Aziz ended the conversation with the warning that “Either you go to the Council and tell the truth—that we have no more weapons—or we will not meet with you or your technical staff again.”

  Tariq Aziz was once again taking his country to the brink by declaring that Iraq was fully disarmed and demanding that UNSCOM state that forthwith or lose the regime’s cooperation. Butler, of course, was not able to do this—but his position had been weakened further by increasing allegations, including from within UNSCOM itself, that the mission had been used by national intelligence agencies for information gathering unrelated to its disarmament mission. The Iraqis seized on this and won support from Russia in denouncing UNSCOM, and Butler in particular as untrustworthy.

  When the Iraqis then issued a new set of demands about the makeup, location, and basic function of UNSCOM—essentially requiring it to be totally reconstituted—Albright and Sandy Berger together called me to insist that this was an attack on the UN and as “the face of the UN to the world,” what mattered was my reaction, not the Council’s. It was my memorandum of understanding with Saddam that had been violated, they stressed, and unless I “hit the Iraqi statement out of the park” in the Council’s next meeting, as Berger put it to me, the United States would act on its own. My immediate instinct was that my public reaction should be in reinforcement of the leading role of the Security Council, as was its proper function, but this argument went nowhere with the U.S. representatives. I now saw, and not for the last time, what my interventionist approach to the role of secretary-general had done: even though I was the servant of the Council, the reality around the world was that my voice in some quarters would now carry more weight in this moment of crisis than the statements and resolutions of a distant and impersonal club of great powers in the form of the Security Council.

  My answer to the standoff was to acknowledge that we had undergone a seven-year process, and we were still without prospects for an outcome that either side would accept. I therefore proposed a comprehensive review of the UN’s relationship with Iraq, including the role of UNSCOM. While Washington opposed such a move—it would amount to “bargaining” with Saddam they insisted—the broader Council, including the UK, understood the value of engaging the Iraqis in a process whereby they would come back into compliance and we could set out on a path to conclusion, rather than permanent crisis. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, the UK permanent representative to the UN, was authorized in October by all members of the Council to engage with Tariq Aziz on the terms I set out. What they kept going back to, however, was the fundamental distrust between Iraq and UNSCOM. The standoff continued for another month. There was even a renewed attempt by Greenstock to convince the Iraqis that through a new Security Council resolution the path to an end to sanctions would be made clear.

  —

  A year’s exhaustive diplomatic efforts to achieve Iraq’s peaceful compliance with the demands of the Security Council were about to come to an ugly—and messy—end. On an official visit to Morocco, I was awakened at 3:30 in the morning of November 11 by a phone call from Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. UNSCOM was withdrawing its staff from Baghdad, he told me. From Butler himself I had heard nothing and so I called Albright to find out what the Americans were planning with Butler. She was able only to confirm that the United States was withdrawing dependents from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Kuwait City, but what she clearly wanted to know was if I would be making a statement in response to UNSCOM’s withdrawal.

  The United States had in the meantime been coordinating their response with the UK and France in order to achieve maximum impact from the Butler announcement. Half an hour later, while I was reviewing our options with Elisabeth Lindenmayer, my close and trusted special assistant, Albright called me back to ask if I had received a statement in my name drafted for me by the United States, the UK, and France condemning Iraqi intransigence, and whether I would issue it. I told her as politely as I could at 4:30 in the morning that I was perfectly capable of having my own statement drafted and would issue one if I thought it appropriate—and that it would be in my own words. I was still furious about Butler’s deeply unprofessional behavior and I was in
no mood to accommodate his masters. I had a far more serious responsibility now: by withdrawing the UNSCOM staff precipitously without informing me—and knowing that it could be a trigger for military action—he had placed in grave danger the lives of nearly four hundred UN staff doing vital humanitarian work. Of course, Butler thought he would force my hand on withdrawing the other UN staff, but I refused. Even though the inspectors would leave, the UN’s humanitarian workers stayed in Iraq until the 2003 invasion, alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people and carrying out their mandate.

  Previously that year, on August 5 and October 31, Iraq had halted cooperation with UNSCOM, and each time we had walked them back. Now, in November, after Butler removed his inspectors without consulting us at UN headquarters, U.S. planes were ready to take to the skies, intent on bombing targets across Iraq in punishment for noncompliance. In response to this threat, on November 13, I immediately called in the Iraqi ambassador to tell him that I would be sending Saddam a letter calling on him to readmit the inspectors—and this time the Iraqis reacted promptly and sent a reply within twenty-four hours accepting my request. When I received it, I called Berger right away—who was furious. “Kofi, I’ve got to tell you frankly. We literally had our planes in the air. We stopped this and we’re taking an enormous risk if once again you and we are embarrassed by noncompliance by the Iraqis.” I assured him that I agreed, and that I had made no promises on the lifting of sanctions—something I neither wanted nor was in a position to do. In closing, however, he requested that I back the United States if Iraq were to break its renewed pledge. “I’ve no doubt that it will work for one week—I’m concerned that in three weeks he will again restrict access and we’ll be humiliated.” Once again, Saddam miscalculated and soon gave the United States and its allies the justification for launching Operation Desert Fox, which on December 16 ushered in four days of bombings.