ACCORD HAS MUCH FOR SADDAM, LITTLE ELSE

To his credit, the U.N. secretary general has eased world tension by talking face-to-face with Saddam Hussein and getting assurances from the Iraqi leader that the renegade nation will abide by the terms of the latest agreement on weapons inspections. But those who raise their eyebrows about the specifics of that accord have good reason to be skeptical.

It must not be forgotten that there was a simple objective of U.N. sanctions at the end of the Gulf War seven years ago: Find and destroy all weapons of destruction. Once that was accomplished under the terms of an agreement also backed by Saddam, the sanctions would be dropped. Instead, Saddam has used every ruse at his disposal to thwart the inspections. Now there are signs that world opinion has been gullible to his deception. Some world leaders point to the suffering of the Iraqi people and decry the harshness of the sanctions. Have they forgotten who is responsible for keeping those sanctions in place? It is none other than Saddam Hussein, who places a higher priority on keeping his deadly arsenal over the welfare of his own people.

As for this latest U.N. agreement, it appears to be a document with two faces. One face is that of an earnest dictator who has finally seen the wisdom of allowing "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted" inspections by the United Nations. And when Secretary General Kofi Annan talks about the accord, that's the phrase he emphasizes. Who could find fault with such a pact?

Well, almost anyone who has read the fine print. Much of the accord's other face deals with new "rules" for inspections. How can anything by unconditional and unrestricted if it has to follow conditional and restrictive rules? In simple terms, there can be no "rules" if the United Nations is to achieve any semblance of a credible inspection in a land where deception is a way of life in the top levels of government.

There also is the assessment of the new agreement from David Kay, formerly the United Nations' top weapons inspector in Iraq: "I think it is unworkable." He ought to know. He struggled for a long time with Saddam's games of hide and seek. He certainly is in a far better position to assess the practicality of the accord than Annan, who is more willing to play peacemaker at any cost without worrying about actually finding the weapons Saddam has hidden while all the jawboning was going on.

While too many members of the U.N. Security Council may be suckered by the Saddam-Annan accord, the United States must still find answers to a lot of hard questions before it goes along.