Without fanfare, Britain and the United States have resumed their bombing of Iraq. Whether or not the official Iraqi reports that the latest attacks killed civilians are true, the bombing is unnecessary and reckless.
After long debate the United Nations passed a resolution many months ago setting up a new inspection system designed mainly to check Iraqi progress in dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and the potential to re-create them. The inspectors have recruited their team and will soon be ready to visit Baghdad.
Although Iraq has not yet said it will accept them, for some weeks it has not repeated its statements rejecting the resolution that set up the inspection team.
There is therefore an opportunity that could make it easier for the team to start work.
Air attacks on Iraq at this moment cannot help the climate. To claim, as the United States and Britain do, that they contain no political message and are merely a technically triggered reaction to the fact that Iraqi defenses have locked on to the planes, is disingenuous.
The aircraft that patrol the two no-fly zones over Iraq are under political control and Washington and London could easily reduce the number of flights.
Britain and the United States should also take more seriously the questions which the Iraqis have raised about the new inspectors. When the council authorized the team, the aim was to find a quicker way of achieving compliance and ending the international sanctions, which have dragged on for almost 10 years.
It is true that the sanctions have been eased, but they are still in force and doing serious harm to ordinary people, though very little to the regime. Iraq wants to know whether there is a finite term in sight if it cooperates with the inspectors or whether it is entering another tunnel in which objections will constantly be raised.
The American presidential election complicates the matter since neither candidate wants to appear weak. But the Iraqi bogy has fortunately lost much of its resonance in American politics and there is no reason why sensitive diplomacy at the United Nations should suddenly explode into a campaign issue.
Rather than sending warplanes over Iraq, the United States and Britain should be sending signals to their U.N. missions to urge the secretary-general to answer Iraq's legitimate questions.
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