UN Inspectors' Iraq report due today

Iraq’s arms declaration is incomplete, its scientists are not fully co-operating with inspections and Baghdad is obstructing the use of a U-2 plane which could be helpful in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, inspectors are expected to tell the Security Council in a toughly worded report today.

After two months on the job, the chief weapons inspectors will not be able to confirm claims by the Bush administration that Iraq is rearming, according to UN officials.

Still, with all the open questions, the reports by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei will be key to Washington’s efforts to bolster international support for a war on Iraq and to efforts by sceptics to avert one.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, Mr Blix had written a toughly-worded 16-page report that he will deliver as a speech during the public portion of today’s council meeting. "I have been working very hard and very carefully on the details," he told The Associated Press.

He would not discuss the contents because of "sensitivities and expectations" surrounding the report.

US Ambassador John Negroponte is expected to respond to the inspectors’ reports once today’s session moves behind closed-doors. An administration official said the ambassador would focus more on Iraq’s obligations than on the inspectors’ findings.

"He will remind the council that they all agreed in November that this would be Iraq’s last opportunity to comply and that two months is more than enough time to test Saddam’s intentions to co-operate," the official told AP.

The inspectors still do not know what happened to Iraq’s stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or how much time they have left to find the answers.

But Mr ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, intends to make the case for more time.

“We’re just in mid-course and we still need to exhaust the option of inspections before we think of any alternatives,” Mr ElBaradei told AP upon his arrival to New York from Vienna yesterday.

“We still need more time and that depends obviously on how intensive our work is and how co-operative Iraq is.”

According to Security Council Resolution 1441, crafted by the Bush administration and adopted in November, inspectors do not need to prove Iraq is re-arming.

Any false statements or omissions in Iraq’s arms declaration, coupled with a failure to comply with and co-operate fully in the implementation of the resolution, would place Baghdad in “material breach” of its obligations – a finding that could open the door for war.

For the Bush administration, that has already happened and time is now running out for Saddam to disarm through inspections. In Davos, Switzerland yesterday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he believed the inspections had run their course, though he did not explicitly call for their end.

He said that as a result of Iraq’s lack of co-operation, he had lost faith in the ability of inspectors to fulfill their mission.

Most of the Security Council believes that is a decision they must make based on the inspectors’ assessments. At the UN headquarters, Mr Blix would not comment on Powell’s speech.

While there is general agreement that Iraq has not been fully honest in its declaration and that it could be co-operating better with inspectors, the absence of a “smoking gun” or cries for help from Mr Blix and Mr ElBaradei have led powerful council members such as France, Germany and Russia to argue against military intervention and in favour of more time for peaceful disarmament.

While the inspectors have criticised Iraq over the past 60 days, they have also praised the access inspectors were given at hundreds of sites, including presidential palaces, as well as Iraq’s cooperation in the areas of logistics and supplies.

Mr Blix’s report will focus on what his inspectors at the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission have – and have not – learned about Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile programmes.

So far, inspectors have discovered thousands of pertinent documents hidden in the home of an Iraqi scientist, at least 16 empty and undeclared chemical warheads and have said that Iraq illegally imported parts for its missile programme.

Based on one of the few new documents Iraq produced last year, inspectors are now convinced there are an additional 6,000 chemical weapons unaccounted for.

But what inspectors have learned is far less than they had hoped to know by now.

Unanswered is whether Iraq really destroyed all of its deadly chemical and biological agents, such as VX and anthrax, which it managed to weaponise more than a decade ago on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq’s 12,000-page arms declaration has been of little help. Two weeks after he received the dossier in December, Mr Blix slammed the Iraqis for submitting a report filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and old material.

During a meeting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad last week, Mr Blix pressed for fresh evidence and answers to long outstanding questions on their weapons of mass destruction.

But that information has not been forthcoming.

Neither Mr Blix nor Mr ElBaradei’s teams have been able to privately interview Iraqi scientists believed to have the best information about Iraq’s weapons programmes. And the Iraqis are blocking inspectors from conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights.

Still, the picture emerging on Iraq’s nuclear programme seems to be slightly more favourable.

Mr ElBaradei’s spokesman said Iraq would get a “satisfactory” grade for its response to questions and requests for information from the nuclear inspectors.

His teams seem convinced that aluminium tubes the Iraqis tried to purchase were meant for artillery rockets they are allowed to have and not for enriching uranium for a nuclear programme as the Bush administration has claimed.