Inspectors show off hi-tech tools as hunt for Iraqi arms resumes

UN arms inspectors showed off state-of-the-art equipment yesterday and reminded President Saddam Hussein his own palace complexes will no longer be off-limits when they resume their hunt for banned Iraqi weapons.

When the team resumes its work today after four years away, it will be better equipped than its predecessors and have a stronger UN mandate to overcome any Iraqi evasive tactics, senior inspectors said.

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan reminded Iraq failure to co-operate or prove its assertions that it has no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons could trigger a US-led attack.

“I believe war is avoidable,” Annan said. “It is avoidable if President Saddam Hussein honours his commitments made at the UN and co-operates fully with the inspectors.”

Before inspectors pulled out in late 1998 complaining of obstructions, restrictions on visits to vast complexes Iraq deemed “presidential sites” were a bone of contention.

“The issue of the presidential palaces has been resolved by Resolution 1441,” said Dimitri Perricos, the Greek leader of the inspections team from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

“It is not a matter of leaving (the palaces) for last and it’s not an issue of being first. They will be visited when it is required and according to plan.”

The inspectors also showed some of the equipment that has been flown to Baghdad ahead of the first round of inspections. It included apparatus reflecting technological advances over the past four years that, they said, will give them better, quicker evidence of suspicious activity.

Baghdad has until December 8 to provide the Council with an initial report on its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

State media yesterday repeated the official line that it does not have any.

“The truth is that the weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed,” said Al-Thawra, newspaper of the ruling Baath Party.

“All the means to produce them were destroyed, confiscated or made redundant, including some buildings, furniture and cooling devices and other things.”

But US President George W Bush has warned that Saddam would be entering his “final stage” were he to stick to such a blanket denial in two weeks time.

Chief UN inspector Hans Blix said on Monday that Baghdad would have to provide convincing proof it had no such weapons.

However, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose officials are running the nuclear inspections, said a simple oversight on the part of Baghdad would not automatically trigger a breach of the resolution.

“We are governed by reason and logic in our work. If there was an oversight in a secondary issue, then of course we will not rush to the Security Council and say Iraq is not co-operating,” Mohamed ElBaradei said.

The inspectors must give their first report to the Security Council by January 27.

Mr Perricos, and Jacques Baute, the Frenchman leading the IAEA’s team of nuclear inspectors, spoke about their preparations in Baghdad’s former Canal Hotel, which serves as the inspection team operations centre.

They refused to disclose which sites will be visited today but said the hunt overall would take them to previously visited sites, places that have been importing materials that need to be verified and newly suspect sites identified from satellite photographs.

Their equipment includes sophisticated ground-penetrating radar that can uncover underground facilities as well as radioactive isotope detectors.

On display on a table next to them, were plastic containers for collecting samples, as well as filters, and other laboratory equipment. Twenty tons of equipment have already been flown to Baghdad from Larnaca in Cyprus, including communications gear, computers, furniture and medicines.