UN weapons inspectors flying to Iraq

UN inspectors fly to Iraq today, resuming the search for alleged weapons of mass destruction in a mission that could determine whether the Gulf is plunged into a new war.

US President George W Bush has warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that failure to cooperate with the inspectors will bring on an attack. Saddam faces a three-week deadline to reveal his weapons of mass destruction or provide convincing evidence he no longer has any.

Chief UN inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who oversees the International Atomic Energy Agency, flew to Cyprus from Austria yesterday, joining about two dozen other members of the advance team assembling to prepare for resumption of inspections after a nearly four-year absence.

“The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq, the Security Council and the members of the Security Council,” Mr Blix said.

Mr Blix, who will lead the overall mission, said his team was prepared to meet the challenge of ensuring Iraqi compliance. But he said he hoped Iraq would not try to hide anything.

Mr Bush is insisting on “zero tolerance” of the Iraqi delaying tactics and deceit which marked the previous inspection effort.

The US is waiting to see Iraq’s response to inspections before going to the Security Council for debate of military action, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.

“It seems to me that what will happen is a pattern of behaviour will evolve and then people will make judgments with respect to it,” Mr Rumsfeld said.

Sounding a tough line, Mr ElBaradei said there was agreement on the need for “intrusive verifications – that means we would go everywhere, we will use every means at our disposal to make sure that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction”.

He also said Iraqis with key information would be taken out of the country for interviews for their own safety if necessary but acknowledged, “if people do not want to talk, we obviously will not be able to force them to talk”.

But Mr Blix favours co-operation instead of confrontation with the Iraqis, and the differences in approach could create tension between the inspectors and the Bush administration, UN officials said.

Although Mr Blix has urged the US to provide more intelligence support for his mission, he also warned over the weekend of the pitfalls of such cooperation, saying in Paris that the previous inspection mission failed in part because of its close association with government intelligence agencies and Western states.

Mr Blix and Mr ElBaradei warned yesterday that they would not tolerate attempts to coerce their staff into surreptitiously sharing information with governments.

“I can never guarantee that everyone will be 100 percent in my service,” Mr Blix said. “But if we find anyone doing anything else, it’s bye-bye.”

Blix has said that preliminary inspections will probably resume on November 27, with full-scale checks beginning after Iraq files a declaration of its banned weapons programmes by a December 8 deadline.

Mr Blix then has 60 days to report back to the UN Security Council with his findings.