United Nations Iraq

Secretary-General Kofi Annan is resisting Washington's attempts to make him the point man in the latest confrontation with Iraq and has no immediate plans to intervene in the increasingly tense impasse, officials here said Monday. Annan's reluctance to take on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over Hussein's decision to halt cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors undermines the revised American strategy on Iraq and has contributed to the disarray in the U.N. response to Baghdad.

The United Nations so far regards Iraq as only having "contravened" an accord signed in February, a senior U.N. Security Council source said Friday. Iraq was warned this year of the "severest consequences" in the event of any "violation" of the agreement it concluded with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But Iraq had so far only "contravened" the pact because its announcement Wednesday that it was suspending cooperation with U.N.

Openly flouting the U.N. blockade against Baghdad, Turkey has introduced regulations that, in effect, legalize the import and sale of ever-growing volumes of Iraqi fuel smuggled into this country.

Talks between Iraq and the United Nations on dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have collapsed, and the chief U.N. inspector was cutting his trip to Baghdad short, the president of the Security Council said Monday. Richard Butler will be in New York by Wednesday at the latest to brief the council, said Danilo Turk, the Slovenian ambassador to the council and its current president. Butler was unlikely to get clearance to fly out of Baghdad before dawn today.

Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors has crippled the international investigation of Baghdad's nuclear weapons program and increased the chance that Iraq could resume atomic bomb development without detection, officials reported Tuesday. The disclosure was included in a letter to the president of the Security Council from Mohammed Baradei, director of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. affiliate that is in charge of nuclear inspections in Iraq.

Faced with a fresh reminder of Iraqi intransigence, the Security Council on Thursday unanimously rejected any easing of economic sanctions against Baghdad but remained divided on any further action. The council decision followed a gruff dismissal by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz of an overture from chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler.

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday called Baghdad's latest refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors "totally unacceptable" and urged the government of President Saddam Hussein to immediately resume disarmament efforts. At the same time, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan held out a diplomatic carrot to Iraq, proposing a "comprehensive review" of Baghdad's cooperation with the weapons inspection process. The new review, he said, would "engage the Iraqis more closely than we have hitherto."

One of the most senior U.N. weapons inspectors resigned Wednesday after charging that the United States and U.N. officials have opted to "surrender to the Iraqi leadership" in the ongoing confrontation with Baghdad. The resignation of Scott Ritter, a retired U.S.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler said his team wants to wrap up its work "as soon as possible" so the United Nations can consider lifting sanctions against Iraq. Butler, who arrived in Baghdad with 19 others on the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait, will begin talks with Iraqi officials today. Marking the anniversary of the invasion, a newspaper owned by President Saddam Hussein's son Odai accused Kuwait of working with the West to maintain U.N. trade sanctions. The U.N.

The noisy resignation of a senior U.N. arms inspector put the Clinton administration on the defensive Thursday, as it sought to explain an Iraq policy that critics assail as a new soft line toward a dangerous regime. Faced with deepening divisions on the U.N. Security Council, the administration in recent months has tried to reduce conflicts over the inspectors' intrusive forays into suspected Iraqi weapons sites.