Christmas another working day for inspectors

Christmas was an opportunity for another angry, anti-American speech from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but just another working day for United Nations inspectors trying to determine whether he is hiding nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Inspections today took UN teams to a gas laboratory and a grain storage area in al-Taji, a vast complex which has attracted UN attention in the past.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has linked al-Taji to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme.

In an address read out by a state television announcer to mark Christmas Eve, Saddam again rejected American and British claims that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. He also said he wanted to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors.

“We are confident that the outcome of the inspection operations will be a big shock to the United States and will expose all the American lies if things remain on a technical and professional course with no hidden agendas and if the inspection teams can rid themselves of the pressure put on them by the United States, Britain and the Zionists.”

Saddam said the world was entering a new year “under unique circumstances ... which have been manufactured by the forces of evil and darkness in order to create a situation of instability, chaos and tension”.

The United States and its Zionist ally – meaning Israel – were bent on waging war against Iraq in a first step to spread their “hegemony ... across the world and control fortunes and future” of other countries”, he said.

“As much as Iraq loves life, its people are ready for martyrdom in the defense of its land and air space, its sanctities and future.

“The road to deter the injustice, aggression and wickedness of the evil-minded is the road of jihad (holy war) and struggle,” the statement said.

While Saddam spoke of war, about 120 people, including Iraqi Christians and American peace activists, prayed for peace yesterday at St Rafael’s Catholic Church in downtown Baghdad.

With fears building that the US will wage war on Iraq, members of the American and British-based Iraq Peace Team have traveled to Baghdad to call for a peaceful solution to the crisis and the lifting of harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.

“Of course I’m afraid, but I’ll pray for peace,” 12-year-old Zeina Shamuel said at St. Rafael’s as worshippers sang in Arabic: “The people living in the night, will see the long awaited light.”

Christians represent about 5% of Iraq’s 22 million population and live mainly in Baghdad and the north. Iraq is predominantly Muslim and officially secular.

The United States and Britain have threatened war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq’s most comprehensive attempt to rebut claims it has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, a declaration to the United Nations earlier this month, has been dismissed as pages of lies by London and Washington and said by the top UN inspector to be largely a rehash of old information.

In an interview yesterday, Iraq’s chief liaison to the UN mission said he saw nothing to justify criticisms expressed by chief UN inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The information we gave is the real and complete information,” said General Hossam Mohammed Amin.

His government would not threaten Iraqi scientists who accepted invitations from UN inspectors to leave Iraq for further interviews about Baghdad’s weapons programmes, he added.

An Iraqi scientist interviewed by UN inspectors yesterday said Baghdad was not hiding any weapons of mass destruction.

Sabah Abdel-Nour, who worked in a nuclear programme Iraq says is now closed down, refused to be quizzed in private, telling UN inspectors that he wanted Iraqi officials present during the interview.

Later, at Baghdad’s University of Technology, where he is a professor, Abdel-Nour said the UN inspectors were objective and friendly and their ”questions were mainly about what has been done or any progress which has been achieved in Iraq since 1998”.

Today, inspectors were back at al-Taji, which they have visited at least twice earlier this month.

On December 16, a team examining Iraq’s ballistic missile capabilities went to the al-Taji fiberglass production plant, which has become part of the Thaat Al Sawary plant.

On December 19, inspectors went to al-Hareth in al-Taji, a site that Iraq maintains is a food warehouse but which US officials have claimed might be a biological weapons facility.

In its report on inspections in Iraq in the 1990s, the International Atomic Energy Agency said al-Taji was the planned site of a gas centrifuge programme used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

The previous round of UN inspections in the 1990s led to destruction of tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, and to the dismantlement of Iraq’s programme to try to build atomic bombs.

That monitoring regime broke down in 1998 amid UN-Iraqi disputes and the inspectors now in Iraq are the first to work here in four years.

Sites visited today also included the Ibn Al-Haitham Company, identified in a British dossier on Iraq as a chemical weapons site.