The purpose of the UN mechanism, this inspection mechanism, is not to engage in a cat and mouse game with Saddam Hussein and try to find weapons that the Iraqi government is working on concealing.

If all goes well, the Iraqis are going to have a country that's going to have a representative government and will be at peace with its neighbors and in the region.

The key to making the inspections work is the Iraqi government making the crucial decision that because of the international pressure Iraq has to disarm itself.

Peace, of course, is different from divorce; indeed, in essential respects, divorce is the opposite of peace.

Europe is a collection of free countries.

They have involved co-operation between the Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.

There have been linkages between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda going back more or less a decade.