Inspectors find 'positive' change in Iraq

The UN’s chief weapons inspectors have said they sense a “good beginning” and a changed “positive attitude” in Baghdad toward their job of ensuring Iraq is free of banned arms.

But at the end of their two days of talks yesterday Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei said they did not win immediate agreement, as expected, for U-2 reconnaissance flights over Iraq.

The Baghdad meetings were a prelude to crucial reports the two chief inspectors must file with the UN Security Council on Friday, new assessments of Iraqi co-operation that will help the council decide on next steps in the months-long Iraq crisis.

The Iraqis gave the chief inspectors more documents to try to clarify lingering questions about 1980s chemical and biological weapons, and said they would establish commissions to search for additional documents and any leftover weapons.

“I’m beginning to see some positive attitude,” Mr Blix said in an Associated Press interview at the end of the talks.

“We are leaving with a sense of cautious optimism,” UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said. “We see a very good beginning, and would like to see much more in the coming weeks.”

The UN experts resumed inspections on November 27, after a four-year gap.

Mr Blix had complained in a Security Council report last month that the Iraqis were not co-operating on “substance” – by supplying evidence to clear up remaining questions about VX nerve agent, anthrax and some other weapons developed in the 1980s. Iraq has not documented all its reported destruction of VX, for example.

Returning to Baghdad for their second round of talks in less than three weeks, the chief inspectors were looking for documents, witnesses or forensic evidence to close such gaps.

At a news conference after yesterday’s sessions, Mr Blix and Mr ElBaradei reported receiving documents – the Iraqis said there were 24 – offering “explanations”, if not hard evidence, regarding outstanding issues on anthrax, VX nerve gas and Iraqi missile development. Mr Blix said the documents would have to be studied by his experts to determine their value.

The Iraqis also told the inspection chiefs they would establish two commissions, one to search for any leftover weapons or components nationwide, and the other to track down any more relevant documents.

An Iraqi weapons commission with a broad mandate had been suggested by Mr Blix after Baghdad set up a more narrow inquiry to hunt down any 122mm rocket warheads for chemical agents. That search started after UN inspectors found a dozen such empty warheads at an Iraqi ammunition depot on January 16.

Mr Blix said inspectors found another empty warhead yesterday, bringing to 18 the number uncovered thus far.

The chief inspectors had expected to clear away some remaining practical issues in their Baghdad talks. On the U-2, for example, the Iraqis had baulked at allowing the American spy planes to fly in support of UN inspections unless the US and Britain suspended air patrols over northern and southern Iraq while a U-2 was aloft.

Presidential adviser Amer al-Saadi, the inspectors’ Iraqi counterpart in the Baghdad talks, indicated to reporters later yesterday that Iraq would acquiesce to the U-2 flight, without attaching such a condition, by the time the chief inspectors make their report on Friday.

“Iraq expects Blix and ElBaradei to be fair and tell the truth,” Mr al-Saadi said of that report. “There is nothing left that we hadn’t provided an answer to, even trivialities.”

But Mr Blix said he would not attach the word ”breakthrough” to the talks, but rather “a beginning”. Mr ElBaradei said: “As long as we are registering good progress, the Security Council will be willing to give us time.”