Blix to brief UN Security Council next week

The UN Security Council has asked chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to brief members next week as the US fielded its own disarmament teams inside Iraq and Secretary-General Kofi Annan pressed for UN experts to return as quickly as possible.

Mexico’s UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, the current council president, last night announced that Mr Blix had been invited to a council meeting on April 22.

The return of UN inspectors has become a sensitive issue for the council, which was bitterly divided over the war against Iraq and remains divided over the UN role once the fighting ends.

The majority of the 15-nation council including Britain, the closest US ally, supports the return of UN weapons inspectors.

But the Bush administration, which blamed Mr Blix for hurting its drive for international support in the run-up to the war, has not invited UN inspectors to take part in the disarmament process. Instead, the US has tried to poach some UN inspectors and has deployed its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction.

Under Security Council resolutions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the 1991 Gulf War, UN inspectors must certify that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programmes have been dismantled before sanctions can be lifted.

It was not clear how sanctions could be eliminated if the inspectors are barred from returning – and US officials have said they want sanctions lifted.

One council diplomat said the aim of next week’s session with Mr Blix is to try to connect what is happening on the ground with UN inspections.

Blix headed the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, known as Unmovic, which was responsible for overseeing the elimination of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, along with the long-range missiles that deliver them.

Mr Annan ordered all UN international staff to leave Baghdad shortly before the war began.

Last week, he stressed that the inspectors’ mandate is still valid “and when the situation permits they should go back to resume their work”.

On Monday, UN deputy spokeswoman Hua Jiang went further when asked if the secretary-general could send the inspectors back when he considers the situation in Iraq secure. She noted that when Mr Annan ordered the inspectors to leave, “he did say that as soon as the security situation allows, the inspectors will go back, and that’s what he plans to do”.

Mr Blix has said his teams are ready to return on short notice.

He said last week he felt “regret that we did not have the opportunity to work a little longer”, adding that in his opinion the Security Council would have “authorised an armed action” if the inspections had failed.