Iraq weapons inspectors widen search

3.00pm

BAGHDAD - Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix said his teams were widening their search net for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thanks to new US and British intelligence information.

"We have already visited sites that have not been visited before and there will be more of them coming," Blix told the BBC on Monday (Tuesday NZT).

Last month Blix complained that the United States and Britain, the chief prosecutors pressing the case that Baghdad possesses weapons of mass destruction, had not been giving him the intelligence he needed.

"It is coming and we are going to act on it...I felt in the past that sometimes they were a bit like librarians who had books that they didn't want to lend to the customer -- but I think that is changing," Blix said.

The next crunch over Iraq comes next weekend when Blix and UN nuclear agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei go to Baghdad to demand Iraq account for missing stocks such as chemical bombs, nerve gas and missile engines. Iraq says it has the answers.

Pope John Paul led a growing chorus of voices raised against war or opposed to any hasty decision to pull the trigger, saying a conflict in the Gulf would be a "defeat for humanity". Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others talked of peace initiatives.

The big question was whether the UN experts and nervous governments in Europe and the Middle East had made Washington more cautious about carrying out a threat of war against Iraq if it failed to come clean over any weapons of mass destruction.

US officials and defence experts said political and logistical pressure could delay any invasion of Iraq for months, despite the Pentagon's huge build-up of warplanes, ships and tens of thousands of troops in the oil-rich Gulf region.

"Those soldiers can't just hit the sand shooting on arrival. I wouldn't expect anything in February, or even early March. And who knows what the political landscape will be then?" one US official told Reuters.

But the United States and close ally Britain face a dilemma in war planning as April heralds the start of Iraq's fierce summer heat and sandstorms.

The United States and Britain stuck to their guns in insisting Iraq must disarm or face war, but seemed increasingly keen to show patience as long as Baghdad co-operated with UN inspectors.

"President George W Bush thinks it remains important for the inspectors to do their job and have time to do their job. The president has not put an exact timetable on it," said a White House spokesman.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said there should be no "arbitrary timescale" but repeated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had to be disarmed peacefully or else by force.

Blix made clear on Monday he was operating under his own timetable and underlined it by saying he planned to present Iraq with a list of key remaining disarmament tasks only at the end of March.

Colleagues spoke of the searches possibly taking up to a year depending on Iraqi cooperation.

"I represent disarmament through inspections and we do our best to move on that line," Blix told Reuters in an interview.

"I would imagine that the Iraqis seeing this (US and British military) build-up would feel a great preference for disarmament through inspection, so they see the seriousness of the situation."

Blix is visiting Brussels, London and Paris this week before going to Baghdad at the weekend.

He said he and ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency head, would confront Iraqi officials this weekend with big gaps in the 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq submitted to the United Nations on December 7.

Blix said he would tell Iraq that a list of scientists and other people Baghdad had presented for inspectors to interview omitted many relevant names.

"We will tell them in very clear terms that we don't think the declaration was adequate, that it did not do away with a lot of question marks," he said.

Blix and ElBaradei are due to make a key report to the United Nations Security Council on January 27 on Iraq's compliance with inspections.

They told the Security Council last week that while searches in Iraq so far had not uncovered a "smoking gun", or hard evidence, Baghdad had left a "great many questions" unanswered.

Washington has signalled that if Iraq does not provide satisfactory answers, this could be deemed non-cooperation under UN resolutions and therefore a trigger for war.

The Pope became the most prominent new voice against conflict in the Gulf, declaring in an address: "No to war!"

"What are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than 12 years of embargo?" he said.

On the eve of talks between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday, a senior German official called on France to keep its distance from Washington and take account of German caution over a possible war on Iraq if Europe's goal of a common foreign policy was to be a reality.

- REUTERS


Herald feature: Iraq