BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Scott Ritter, the UN "weapons inspector" who was barred from Iraq in January after being accused of working as a spy, is back on the job organizing provocative violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Ritter, a U.S. Marine intelligence officer during the 1991 Gulf War, organized "surprise visits" to a number of locations in Iraq March 6.

At the same time, Washington has continued its U-2 spy flights over Iraq. Other U.S. provocations include UN "inspectors" barging into private quarters unannounced. The United Nations Security Council had approved a resolution March 2 that demands "immediate and full compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions."

Earlier this year Baghdad blocked a group of "weapons inspectors" led by Ritter from entering Iraqi intelligence headquarters. Washington used this provocation as a pretext for escalating its war preparations against Iraq.

Moscow and Washington are disputing the composition of the "weapons inspectors" commission, with Russian officials saying a Russian should be appointed co-deputy chairman of the UN special commission. U.S. ambassador William Richardson expressed "serious reservations" about the idea. Baghdad is urging the inclusion of inspectors from more countries, saying it is dominated by U.S. and British officials. London is the only other permanent member of the Security Council that supports the Clinton administration's claims that it has the authority to use force unilaterally under the UN resolutions passed during Washington's 1990-91 assault on Iraq.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan warned that if Baghdad violated the deal allowing unlimited access for the UN inspectors that he brokered last month with President Saddam Hussein, "it would be much easier to get agreement in the council to take military action." With its finger on the trigger, Washington is keeping 36,000 troops, 400 warplanes, and dozens of ships primed to strike Iraq.

Senate prepares for NATO expansion
The U.S. Senate is preparing to approve the eastward expansion of NATO up to the borders of Russia and the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus. On March 3 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16-2 to add the regimes of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the imperialist military alliance.

Founded in 1949, the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization was organized to exert maximum economic and military pressure on the Soviet Union and other workers states, crush the struggles of workers and peasants around the world, and codify Washington's dominance in Europe.

"Russia's attitude toward NATO enlargement has been and remains unequivocally negative," stated Yuli Vorontsov, Russia's ambassador to the United States, in an opinion piece published in the March 10 Washington Post. "Naturally, we do not expect a NATO attack now. But NATO is a military alliance, its military machine is getting closer to the boundaries of Russia - mind you, a military machine not university centers. Strictly speaking, a Polish tank, even if it is a Soviet-made T-72, automatically becomes a NATO tank after that country joins the Alliance. Whether we want to or not, we shall be obliged to react to these developments if the process goes on," he added

Vorontsov referred to U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who told the Senate committee hearing on NATO expansion, "there are still questions about the future of Russia."

She said the three prospective NATO members "are already behaving as loyal allies" and "if we have to take military action they will be with us."

Vorontsov asserted that "a negative attitude toward enlargement" is expressed by "an almost 100 percent consensus in Russian public opinion."  
 
 
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