Weapons inspectors swoop on nuclear scientist's home

Weapons inspectors swooped on a nuclear scientist’s home in Baghdad today as the chief of the UN’s atomic agency said his monitors would need months more to finish their work.

Mohamed ElBaradei said the International Atomic Energy Agency would be asking the Security Council to extend the inspections mandate for at least a few more months.

“We also intend in the next few weeks to intensify our work,” he added after talks with Russian officials in Moscow.

And in Brussels, the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix warned Iraq it must cooperate more actively if it wants to avoid war.

In their first surprise inspections of private houses the UN monitors quizzed an Iraqi nuclear scientist and a physicist in their homes.

Coming close on the heels of a visit yesterday to one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces, the interviews suggested the inspectors are exploiting new intelligence.

A group of schoolchildren gathered outside the houses in Ghazalia district, chanting: “With our soul, our blood we defend you Saddam! Bush, Bush listen well, we all love Saddam Hussein!”

An Iraqi official said they inspectors had visited the homes of nuclear scientist Shaker el-Jibouri and Faleh Hassan, a physicist, who are neighbours.

Neither man was at home when the UN officials arrived, and they had to wait for up to an hour for them to return and let them in. The inspectors also searched a nearby shack.

It was not clear whether they had removed any materials, or whether they had been able to speak to the pair in private, away from their Iraqi minders.

The experts, who are hunting for evidence of weapons of mass destruction and the programmes to develop them, left the houses after about three hours.

Blix is due to travel to Baghdad on Sunday with ElBaradei. The pair are due to give a preliminary report about the weapons inspections to the Security Council on January 27.

But with the United States deploying tens of thousands of troops to the Gulf for a possible invasion of Iraq, US President George Bush’s statements have grown increasingly impatient in recent days.