The Gulf: Walking the Beat in Iraq

By Lisa Beyer

As the coordinator of United Nations humanitarian operations in Iraq, Bernt Bernander should be able to expect a reasonably smooth passage through the streets of his host country. Recently, though, as Bernander drove north of Sulaymaniyah to inspect the treatment of Kurdish refugees there, gunmen ambushed the five-car convoy. They hit three cars with gunfire, but the occupants miraculously suffered only a few glass splinters. The assailants, it turned out, were Kurdish guerrillas who had mistaken the U.N. delegates for Iraqi government officials. After appropriating one of the vehicles, the guerrillas apologized for shooting and sent the envoys on their way.

No serious harm was done, but the attack served as a warning to the U.N.'s representatives of the pitfalls they face in policing Iraq. It is the most ambitious effort yet by the world body to settle a war and punish an aggressor. Not only must the organization provide refugee relief and keep the peace along a disputed border, but it must also oversee reparations and disarm a nation of its most potent weapons -- which means finding the arms, destroying them and ensuring that they are never replaced.

Working conditions are not ideal. The U.N.'s relief operations in Iraq are drastically underfunded; a plea to members for $578 million in start-up money for the region produced only $105 million. The organization must operate in a country that has been bombed back to a "preindustrial age," as a U.N. report described the situation. And the world body is caught between the conflicting demands of the allies and Iraq. "We're overwhelmed," says Staffan Bodemar, the chief of mission in Baghdad for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The U.N.'s authority to run so much of Baghdad's business comes mainly from the cease-fire resolution adopted by the Security Council on April 3 and grudgingly accepted by Iraq three days later. Among the main assignments:

POLICING THE IRAQ-KUWAIT FRONTIER

As of this week, the U.N. expects all allied troops that were occupying southern Iraq to depart, leaving the job of watching over the 120-mile frontier exclusively to its 1,440-person Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission. Among UNIKOM's members, drawn from 35 countries, are 300 military observers whose duty is to patrol the nine-mile-wide demilitarized zone along the border and to report any truce violations on either side to U.N. headquarters.

These monitors are accompanied by 650 lightly armed U.N. peacekeeping troops. Their role is to protect the U.N. observers and to support personnel; they are powerless to stop any skirmishes in the demilitarized zone. There is little concern that Saddam Hussein will risk the consequences of another foray southward any time soon, but the peacekeepers may have to stay for years, just as they have remained in Cyprus since 1964 and in Lebanon since 1978.

ASSISTING THE KURDS

Late last month the U.N. agreed to assume the administration of allied-built refugee centers for Kurds returning to Iraq from the northern border, where they had fled after their failed rebellion against Saddam in March. That was fine with Baghdad, which had itself asked the world body to do just that. The allies, however, also want to hand over to the U.N. the job of protecting the Kurds from further reprisals by Saddam's forces. As it is, nearly 20,000 allied troops are in northern Iraq watching over the Kurds, and their governments are anxious to bring them home.

The deployment of U.N. troops, however, would require Security Council approval, which the Soviets and Chinese, wary of expanding the limits of U.N. intervention, would probably veto. So late last month British Prime Minister John Major proposed a compromise: instead of dispatching soldiers, the U.N. would send in police to guard the Kurds. As with U.N. troops, they would be drawn from member countries. The U.S. supports the idea, as does the European Community.

Though Baghdad has condemned the proposal as a violation of its sovereignty, the Western allies are not moved by such technicalities. Says a British diplomat: "We are determined to go ahead." U.N. officials in Iraq insist that the proposal is not viable unless Baghdad agrees to it. But Western diplomats contend that Saddam is so eager to see the allies leave and to have U.N. sanctions lifted that he may eventually sign off on the plan.

Even if U.N. police are dispatched, they are no guarantee against renewed fighting between the Kurds and the government. The Egyptians pushed past U.N. forces to attack Israel in 1973, just as the Israelis did when they invaded Lebanon in 1982.

SUPERVISING REPARATIONS

Under the terms of the cease-fire, Iraq is responsible for paying compensation for damages it caused during the war and the occupation of Kuwait. The claims will be immense; according to a U.N. estimate, the destruction in Kuwait is on the order of $8 billion. Reparations are to be paid out of a fund financed by Iraqi oil revenues and administered by a special U.N. commission. That body must still determine what portion of Iraq's oil money to retain. Washington favors seizing 40% to 50% of the overall revenues, while London proposes 25% to 30%. But Iraq supporters like Yemen and Cuba want a much lower rate of 10%, arguing that anything higher would punish the Iraqi people too harshly.

Of course, Iraq cannot begin to chip away at its reparations bill until it starts earning income again. Baghdad has asked the U.N. Sanctions Committee, which includes representatives of each of the 15 Security Council members, to unfreeze $1 billion in Iraqi assets overseas and to permit the export of $1 billion worth of Iraqi oil. The government says it must have the money to purchase food and other essentials. But the U.S. and Britain remain skeptical, $ insisting that Iraq more clearly demonstrate its needs. They are trying to hold the lid on sanctions to force Iraq's compliance with the other cease-fire provisions and to put pressure on Saddam. The Chinese and Soviets are inclined to be more merciful. That division promises to make the Security Council's periodic review of the sanctions, scheduled every 60 days, a political tussle.

DEFANGING IRAQ

Under the cease-fire terms, all of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons are to be destroyed, as are its ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 93 miles and its ability to develop a nuclear bomb. Required last month to produce an inventory of these arms and facilities, Baghdad cheated shamelessly, underestimating its chemical stocks and claiming to possess neither biological weapons nor nuclear weapons-grade material. Last week Iraq submitted a new report and acknowledged that it possesses 48 lbs. of highly enriched uranium. Some of that material, Baghdad said, lies buried under bombed reactors. The rest was reportedly moved to an undisclosed site.

The U.N. commission charged with locating and destroying Iraq's lethal arsenal is authorized to search the country for arms that Baghdad has not accounted for. Allied intelligence reports should help guide the group, whose members, experts from 21 countries, are to meet for the first time this week. But surely Iraq will manage to keep some of its secrets, especially since all trips by U.N. officials outside the capital must be approved by the government 24 hours in advance. "There is no way we can find everything," says a British diplomat.

What the commission does find, it will dismantle, supposedly within 45 days of the Security Council's approval of a demolition plan. Destroying a conventional missile is straightforward. "You remove warheads, crush the body, and that's it," says Yasushi Akashi, U.N. Under Secretary-General for Disarmament. With chemical and biological weapons, though, the process is complicated. "We must be extremely careful about the environment," says Akashi. The U.N. may have to build a special facility for getting rid of these armaments; that could push costs above $100 million.

The U.N. is also charged with seeing that Iraq's fangs, once pulled, do not grow back. By Aug. 1, the Secretary-General is to develop a plan to ensure that Baghdad does not in the future procure any of the weapons forbidden it. That is an imposing task, given Saddam's determination in the past to work around embargoes and also, to be fair, given how many member countries of the U.N. helped him build his arsenal in the first place.

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo/New York, William Mader/London and Lara Marlowe/Baghdad