Dodgy deal

The king was visiting the United Nation's Secretary-General of the day, U Thant, a predecessor of the man who was now receiving the warm plaudits of his adoring staff. And there they now stood, wide-eyed and appreciative of the fact that their beloved Kofi had staved off a second Gulf war.

Mr Annan responded quietly, like the gentle man he is, speaking words of apparent wisdom which could lead to a Nobel Prize for peace if all goes well.

Yet there was something niggling at the back of my mind. And it took the 90-year-old voice of Alastair Cooke, inimitable broadcaster of the American scene, to clarify the thought which was haunting me. Of course, of course.

From his home in New York, Alastair Cooke was viewing the ecstatic welcome with a mounting sense of disquiet, for the simple reason that it reminded him so vividly of Neville Chamberlain coming back from Germany in 1938.

Just as one honest man, in all his naivety, had chosen to place trust in the Monster of Munich, waving a worthless piece of paper at Heston aerodrome before appearing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and blabbering about ''peace for our time'', he was now watching another honest man, who had just placed his trust in another kind of monster.

Would this be any different? Alastair Cooke had his doubts

and directed us to the detail of

the so-called agreement with

Saddam Hussein.

Sure enough, not many hours had passed before Baghdad was quibbling about the interpretation of those details and laying down the law about how and when the inspectors could carry out their search of Saddam's palaces to seek out those deadly toxic products which he is perfectly capable of releasing upon the world.

Now President Clinton does not come into my Top Ten of favourite people. Nor does American diplomacy always rate highly in the realms of delicacy. But it does seem a bit rough that the American President and our own Prime Minister have been cast in the role of warmongers when all they were trying to do was to see that the Iraqi leader complied with agreements reached after the Gulf war of 1991.

Why should it be left to one or two nations to seek enforcement of UN resolutions - and then be held up as villains by those who would rather give in to the monster?

Britain and America have been doing no more than what the UN should have been doing for itself.

Now Kofi Annan goes back to humour the Iraqis, to make concessions here and there and to give them such hope that Saddam is already laughing up his sleeve and forecasting that the sanctions against him will soon be broken by some of the countries anyway.

You've got to hand it to him for his skill as a master tactician. His gift for propaganda is quite stunning, knowing exactly how to stir up anti-American feeling in the Middle East and elsewhere and to exploit it to the full.

Of course there are always those who will kick the Americans at the first opportunity. Like all giants, they are fair game. But where would we be without them in a situation like this? And far from being a puppet, Tony Blair is surely right to weigh in with his support - a combined force without which Kofi Annan would not have been coming back with a smile on his face. The man himself had the good sense to acknowledge that fact.

Meanwhile, back home, you still get people like Anthony Wedgwood Benn appearing all pop-eyed on television to condemn any possible attack on Saddam's fortress, chastising the Americans for any harm they might inflict on the Iraqis, while offering no solution to the ghastly plight of those same people who continue to suffer unthinkably under the mad antics of their own leader.

Of course, half measures in 1991 left us with Saddam still in place, dictating not only to his own people but to the rest of the world.

So let us see what he does this time before we give that third cheer to Kofi Annan.