In a trou­bling piece in the Wash­ing­ton Times, Sad­dam has allegedly demanded that the chil­dren of Iraqi diplo­mats return to Iraq. U.S. intel­li­gence believes this is an attempt to pre­vent defec­tions of high-ranking envoys.
If this is true, and the Times piece says that some diplo­mats haven’t got­ten the mes­sage so it might not be, this is another sign that Sad­dam is increas­ingly ner­vous over the sur­vival of his regime in the face of pres­sure from the United States. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion, today at the United Nations, the U.S. pushed its own res­o­lu­tion on Iraq for­ward, with France indi­cat­ing a will­ing­ness to nego­ti­ate. This leaves Rus­sia as the main hold­out on tough new lan­guage against Iraq, and I’ve been told Amer­ica is work­ing out a deal to set­tle Iraq’s $8 bil­lion debt to Rus­sia in exchange for the Bear’s sup­port. Rus­sia is drag­ging its feet not because of loy­alty to an old cus­tomer, but because it’s hold­ing out for bet­ter terms from the United States. That wiley Putin!
So Sad­dam is feel­ing the heat, but what the out­come of this mul­ti­level chess game is, as yet, hard to predict.