Iraq attitude to arms inspectors under fire

THE United States and Britain yesterday condemned Baghdad’s attitude to UN arms inspectors, but the international community generally said the experts needed more time to complete their search for banned weapons in Iraq.

Reaction to reports by UN weapons chiefs to the Security Council followed predictable lines.

The United States said Baghdad was not co-operating with arms inspectors or complying with UN resolutions to give up weapons of mass destruction Washington says it possesses.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described Iraq’s attitude to the work of the inspectors as “a charade”, while Germany, France and Russia said the arms experts needed more time.

States neighbouring Iraq counselled restraint. UN weapons chief Hans Blix said Iraq had co-operated in opening sites for inspection but had fallen short of filling in gaps in last month’s declaration on its weapons programmes. He said further moves were up to the Security Council.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the Security Council two months of inspections had produced no evidence Iraq was reviving its nuclear arms programme, dismantled by the UN in the 1990s. He sought more time. While Straw called Baghdad’s performance “a charade”, he hedged his bets on how soon a US-led assault on Iraq might go ahead.

He said after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels: “The decision about continuation of inspections is a matter for the Security Council, not for any one State.”

The United States has threatened a unilateral attack on Iraq if Baghdad does not give up biological, chemical and nuclear weaponry which Iraq says it does not have.

Baghdad said it had complied with UN demands. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that while weapons inspections were continuing, they were “running out of time.”

But he would not give a timetable on how long inspections might continue before President George W Bush decided on war.

Britain, firmly allied to the United States, has sent troops to the Gulf, diverging from European partners Germany and France and other international heavyweights such as Russia and China.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac, whose opinions have drawn fire from US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, said the arms inspectors needed more time.

“We are of the opinion ... that the inspectors will get more time for their work,” Schroeder told journalists in Berlin. Chirac, who discussed the issue with Schroeder by phone, echoed his call and urged Baghdad to give the inspectors “full and entire cooperation”.

Germany’s Joschka Fischer, also attending the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, said: “War is no alternative. I think one can conclude that the inspectors are doing a great job which should definitely go on.”

The EU meeting produced a statement seeking more time for the inspectors in what officials said was a “unified position”.

Diplomats said the declaration papered over cracks that would inevitably emerge if Washington went to war. In Moscow, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the reports of the arms inspectors were only intended to provide a preliminary survey of their work and set basic outlines for the future.

Prime Minister Abdullah Gul of Turkey said conflict with Baghdad could spell economic and human disaster and called for increased efforts to avert it. In New Delhi, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi urged Baghdad to co-operate fully with the weapons inspectors.