Chief inspectors arrive for new round of talks

The chief UN arms controllers landed in Baghdad today for a new round of crucial talks with Iraqi officials. As global pressure mounted on Iraq, they expected quick concessions on everyday issues and demanded much more evidence on the tougher questions of leftover Iraqi weapons.

Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, flying in from a UN rear base in Cyprus, were scheduled to hold two days of meetings with Baghdad officials responsible for complying with UN disarmament demands.

The Iraqi concessions began early, with a private interview, long sought by UN inspectors, granted by an Iraqi scientist for the first time on Thursday. Three more scientists were interviewed on Friday.

The Iraqis know they have to concede something to show a change in attitude, said a senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Friday in Cyprus, chief UN nuclear inspector ElBaradei said that progress was vital. “We need to make quick progress because time is critical, because the inspection is an alternative to war and not a prelude to it,” he said.

The outcome of the Baghdad talks could help set a course toward war or peace in the Middle East.

In crucial reports next Friday, Blix and ElBaradei will update the UN Security Council on their assessment of Iraqi cooperation in the disarmament effort.

The two flew from Larnaca, Cyprus to Baghdad today. En route to the Larnaca airport, Blix told reporters, “We are really making no predictions at all” about the talks in Baghdad.

The pressure in the months-long Iraq crisis was intensifying by the day. At UN headquarters in New York, Britain was reportedly preparing a Security Council resolution that would authorise military action against Iraq. The resolution was to be ready by the time the inspectors offer their report.

The US administration of President George W Bush has threatened an invasion if, in its view, Iraq has not abandoned chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes as mandated by UN resolutions.

The US military has steadily built its forces to more than 100,000 in the Persian Gulf region, and the numbers continue to grow. The Polish government said it had ”temporarily” suspended the operations of its small section handling US interests in Baghdad in place of the closed US Embassy.

A majority on the UN Security Council still opposes any early resort to war. “We can disarm Saddam Hussein without going to war,” French President Jacques Chirac reportedly told Bush by telephone on Friday.

Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons were largely destroyed under a UN inspection regime in the 1990s, when UN nuclear teams also dismantled Baghdad’s unsuccessful programme to build atomic bombs.

Blix and ElBaradei have cited three practical issues on which they expect progress in this weekend’s talks:

- Iraq’s reluctance to allow American U-2 reconnaissance flights to be flown over Iraq in support of the inspections. Baghdad has said it first wants US and British warplanes stop flying patrols over northern and southern Iraq during the U-2 flight periods. Iraq is expected to back off from that demand.

- The UN inspectors’ wish for interviews with weapons scientists that are not monitored by Iraqi officials. About 20 Iraqi specialists had declined before Thursday, when Baghdad officials put forward a biologist for a private session. On Friday, the Foreign Ministry said three others had undergone such unmonitored questioning. The UN inspection agency did not immediately confirm that.

- The United Nations’ demand that Iraq enact a law banning weapons of mass destruction on its soil. The government had agreed in principle to this during the last Blix-ElBaradei visit January 19-20. The UN officials expect more movement toward concrete legislation.

Baghdad will “do our best to make his (Blix’s) visit successful,” said Maj Gen Hossam Mohamed Amin, head Iraqi liaison to the inspectors.

But Blix has said he wants to see major progress on substantive issues as well, such as unanswered questions about gaps in Iraq’s accounting for some weapons or weapons components. The inspectors have noted discrepancies between documented amounts of VX nerve agent produced and the amounts certified as having been destroyed in the early 1990s.

The inspectors want to see documents, hear witnesses or see other forensic evidence supporting Iraqi contentions that the last remnants of chemical and biological weapons of a decade ago were eliminated.

“It’s not enough that they permit the U-2, or give us two or three scientists in private interviews. They really have to come up with substantive evidence,” the senior UN official said.

“If they don’t have the orders (to destroy weapons), if they don’t have the paper, give us the people who were involved to talk to,” another UN source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said after arrival in Baghdad.

Despite the Bush administration’s impatience with the inspection process, the UN operation here continues to expand, based on plans that would extend inspections months into the future to be followed by a years-long system of long-term UN monitoring of Iraq’s military-industrial establishment.

The inspectors’ first large chemical analysis laboratory arrived on Thursday, to be set up at their headquarters compound on Baghdad’s outskirts. Additionally, UN officials are discussing with Germany the deployment of slow- and low-flying unmanned reconnaissance planes to assist their field missions.

The UN experts were back on the road again today, dropping in on a military electrical plant in Baghdad and a water treatment plant in Zaafaraniya, a district on the outskirts of the capital. They also visited the state Bein el-Nahrein agricultural company, just outside Baghdad, and a technical institute in the northern town of Mosul. A nuclear inspection team also surveyed the Baghdad districts of al-Sayidiah and Al-Doura for radiation.