Posted on 02/02/2003 7:05:11 PM PST by Jean S
UNITED NATIONS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The top U.N. disarmament officials are expected to go to Baghdad at the end of the week despite a letter they wrote that appeared to put conditions on the trip, U.N. officials said.
Iraq on Sunday rejected any conditions for the visit, part of last-ditch efforts to secure Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions as the United States prepares for possible war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction it says Baghdad has.
The trip, expected on Saturday, falls a few days before another key report by the inspectors to the U.N. Security Council on February 14.
It may be their last report before the United States makes a final decision on whether to attack.
British Labour politician Tony Benn said in Baghdad he had conducted the first television interview with Iraq's President Saddam Hussein in more than a decade and he hoped it would be aired within the next day or two.
Benn, a 77-year-old former member of parliament, said he asked Saddam very simple and short questions covering weapons of mass destruction, links to al-Qaeda and oil. He would not reveal Saddam's answers.
At the United Nations, the spokesman for U.N. inspection chief Hans Blix said he assumed the Iraqis had accepted the purpose of the meeting as laid out in the letter sent on Friday. "If they do not, we would expect to hear from them soon," spokesman Ewen Buchanan said, adding the trip appeared to be on.
The letter set down an agenda for the visit and urged some U.N. demands to be fulfilled before the trip. These included the overflights by U2 spyplanes and private interviews with Iraqi scientists.
SEEK MISSING DATA
The inspectors also expected Iraq to provide data missing from a declaration on its weapons that Baghdad made on December 7, such as the whereabouts of previously established stocks of the deadly chemical agent VX and anthrax.
Iraq's Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said the visit was going ahead without conditions. "The visit is normal. There are no preconditions in such visits," he told reporters, without referring to the letter.
Iraq's chief arms monitoring body said on Sunday Baghdad was keen to resolve any pending disarmament issues when Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog, visit.
But Hussam Mohammad Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate, gave away little on the two main issues.
Amin repeated Baghdad's earlier position that his government could not guarantee the requested safety of U2 planes when they entered U.S.-British no-flight zones.
On the private interviews, he said Iraqi authorities could not force anyone to submit to them. "We agreed...to encourage the scientists to go through private interviews but we can't force them," he said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has said he would provide the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday with proof that Iraq has banned weapons programs.
"They won't be really proof, they will be fabricated space and aerial photos. If we are given the chance to look at these photos, we will prove they are lies," Amin said.
Blix is executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons. ElBaradei is director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for nuclear arms teams.
DENIES MOBILE UNIT REPORTS
Amin said the talks would touch on Blix's January 27 report in which he sharply criticized Iraq for not fully accounting for its chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles.
Amin said the inspectors had visited 548 sites -- including 84 which had never been inspected before -- since they resumed inspections on November 27 after a four-year gap.
He denied U.S. and British reports that Iraq had mobile units which produce biological agents, saying Iraq had purchased a portable lab from a British company to test imported foodstuffs.
Another lab did not meet specifications and would be returned, Amin said. Blix in comments on Friday also said he had not knowledge of such laboratories.
In Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors searched at least nine sites on Sunday for banned weapons, some visiting a high explosives store and a dairy factory while others flew by helicopter to locations further from Baghdad.
Iraqi Kurdish authorities in the northern city of Arbil said they had refused to allow U.N. inspectors into a university science faculty because they had failed to inform the local government in the breakaway region they were coming.
But a U.N. spokesman in Baghdad said he believed a U.N. team did inspect the biological and chemistry department at the university. He said a dispute broke out over the presence of Iraqi minders with the team who were asked to leave the Kurdish area.
ATTACK DETAILS
As the U.S. military pressed on with its buildup in the Gulf, defense officials in Washington gave details of a the first phase of an attack plan.
They said more than 3,000 guided bombs and missiles would hit military and leadership targets in the first 48 hours, softening the way for a two-pronged ground attack meant to topple Saddam's government.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al Shara appealed to the European Union to help avert a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq and save the region from "more violence, more terrorism, more anarchy...more bloodshed."
Arab League head Amr Moussa went to Lebanon to discuss bringing forward the date of the League's annual summit, now set for late March, over the threat of a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
Low for Blix and his sidekick; high for the inspectors that are on the ground. Blix is in for a day or two. The other guys are going to be caught in the grinder, I'm afraid.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.