Blix arrives in Baghdad for talks

The chief UN arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad today for urgent talks with Iraqi officials, bearing a long list of questions about Iraq’s weapons programmes and a demand for more “active co-operation” from Saddam Hussein’s government.

Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei arrived for what Mr ElBaradei described as a “last-ditch effort” to persuade Iraq “to give us what we need” before the two report to the UN Security Council on January 27 to give their assessment of Iraq’s claim that it has no banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

“We do not think that war is inevitable,” Blix told reporters in Baghdad. “We think that the inspection process that we are conducting is the peaceful alternative. It requires comprehensive inspections and it requires a very active Iraqi co-operation.”

“It’s in Iraq’s benefit to submit all the evidence it has, so that we can submit positive reports to the Security Council,” ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear agency, told reporters. He said the possibility of war “very much depends on progress we make in the next few weeks”.

He and Dr Blix, head of the UN inspectors specialising in chemical and biological arms, landed at midday at Saddam International Airport after a flight from Cyprus, where they have a rear base.

They were met by presidential science adviser Lt Gen Amer al-Saadi, who was to lead the Iraqi delegation in three hours of talks this afternoon and for two hours tomorrow morning, after which the UN officials would depart.

“We need to show progress because the international community is getting very much impatient,” ElBaradei said in Cyprus. “We need to bring closure to the Iraqi file on weapons of mass destruction.”

Blix said the inspection program was not “a preview to war. It is an alternative to war and that is what we want to achieve. We are not here to humiliate or to insult. We are here to inspect in the best, correct manner.”

Those inspections continued today, as they have almost every day since November 27. Experts from the UN agencies fanned out to an ammunition plant and university south of Baghdad, a missile factory west of the capital and a chemical plant and another university campus in Baghdad.

The US administration of President George W Bush, which rejects Iraq’s assertion that it has no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, is moving ships, planes and tens of thousands of troops to the Gulf to reinforce its warning that it will attack if Iraq doesn’t disarm voluntarily.

Anti-war sentiment is strong among America’s European allies, who have been urging the Bush administration to give the inspectors more time to complete their work and avoid war.

Protesters rallied by the tens of thousands yesterday in Washington and in smaller numbers in other cities around the world to demand that the United States back down from the threat of war.

In Rome, America’s top soldier, General Richard Myers, said yesterday that Iraq still had time to fully disclose what US officials contend are continuing programs for weapons of mass destruction, and avoid an attack.

The UN’s inspection teams returned in November after a four-year hiatus to determine whether Iraq still holds the kinds of weapons banned at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

With Washington increasing pressure on Iraq, UN teams visited at least six locations yesterday, including Trade Ministry food warehouses in central Baghdad. The team examined at least two refrigerator trucks and a trailer, which the site manager, Nawal Nafa’a Fotohi, said were mobile food-testing laboratories.

Such labs are of particular interest because US intelligence officials believe Iraq may want to develop mobile “fermentation units” to manufacture biological weapons. UN officials had said inspectors would be looking for biological weapons laboratories on trucks.

“We are not afraid of anything and we have nothing to hide,” Fotohi said.

Another team revisited a site south of Baghdad where inspectors on Thursday found 12 empty chemical weapon warheads. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry, in a statement accounting for the inspectors’ daily activities, said the purpose of the return visit was to tag the warheads.

One inspection was scrubbed after Iraqi officials insisted on following a UN team by helicopter into the northern “no-fly” zone from which Iraqi aircraft are banned, the United Nations said.

The UN team said a group of missile inspectors gathered at an air base to fly to a site in northern Iraq. The team cancelled the mission “for safety reasons due to the insistence by the Iraqi side to fly their helicopter into the no-fly zone following (UN) helicopters,” a statement said.

A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the Iraqi attempt as “indirect interference” in the inspections.

UN inspectors have complained that Iraq failed to disclose required details of its weapons programs in a 12,000-page declaration submitted in December. US officials maintain that Iraq’s failure to submit a complete report is evidence that Saddam has no intention of complying with orders to disarm.

UN officials have said inspectors have found no conclusive evidence Iraq was holding illegal weapons. However, suspicions were raised by Thursday’s discovery of the empty warheads and numerous documents found at the home of Iraqi physicist Faleh Hassan.

Hassan said the documents were from his private research projects and students’ theses. He accused the inspectors of ”Mafia-like” tactics. He confirmed the documents contained information about high-tech attempts to enrich uranium in the 1980s but said he never worked for the enrichment program.

The information was declared to the United Nations in 1991 and the documents contained nothing new, he said.

ElBaradei said the documents appeared to be related to the use of lasers to enrich uranium, possibly for nuclear weapons. He also said that if the Iraqis had not disclosed information contained in the documents, “it obviously doesn’t show the transparency we’ve been preaching.”

On Sunday, before heading for Baghdad, ElBaradei questioned why the documents were kept in a private home and said, “I understand some of them are classified documents, and the most fundamental question, ‘are there still documents to be seen?’ If there are ... I hope Iraq will take the initiative to bring them forward.”