(SCMP; September 21, 2002)
By mid-October, United Nations inspectors should be back in Baghdad for the first time in four years to resume their efforts to detect and destroy Iraq's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a development that should be welcomed, and it would be unfortunate if United States doubts about the efficacy of the inspection regime were to stop this process.
It is in the interests of the world that Iraq not develop and possess weapons of mass destruction. It is equally in the interests of all that war does not break out in Iraq. The only way to work towards both these objectives is to ensure that the inspection regime works as effectively as possible.
While a great deal of scepticism has been expressed in Washington about whether the inspections can achieve anything, it is useful to recall the experience of earlier inspections. In seven years the previous inspection regime uncovered Iraq's biological weapons programme and destroyed much of the regime's stocks of these weapons. It also unearthed Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme, and destroyed the facilities and equipment that Saddam Hussein had acquired.
True, the weapons inspectors grew increasingly frustrated towards the end, and many of them believed that there were materials and facilities that they had not succeeded in uncovering. But the inspectors have a second chance now, and they must be allowed to succeed. This involves giving them the international backing they require.
US efforts to strengthen the inspection regime can only be welcomed. But an effort to stop the process short before it has even begun will be counter-productive.