US signs military deal with Qatar

By HAITHAM HADDADIN

BAGHDAD - The United States signed a pact yesterday to upgrade military bases in Qatar that it could use in any conflict with Baghdad, as United Nations arms inspectors searched six suspect weapons sites in Iraq.

The World Bank said a US military attack on Iraq in the coming months could send crude oil prices soaring over US$40 ($80) a barrel.

But it said prices could plummet below US$20 after a conflict as more oil supplies hit the market.

Brent oil futures stood around US$26.30 yesterday. But many traders were holding off from doing business before today's Opec meeting in Vienna, which will decide future output policy for the Middle East-dominated cartel of oil exporters.

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani signed the agreement to upgrade Qatar's bases at a ceremony in Doha.

Rumsfeld said the pact, under discussion for some time, would improve military readiness.

"This agreement is not connected to Iraq. It has been under discussion for a long time. It would be a mistake to connect it to Iraq."

But Qatar and other Gulf states such as Bahrain and Kuwait would be key in any US attack on Iraq.

The UN arms inspectors based in Baghdad continued their search, a day after Washington threatened possible nuclear retaliation if its forces or its allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq denies possessing such weapons and submitted a 12,000-page dossier on its weapons programmes to the United Nations at the weekend.

The distribution of the document has angered smaller, non-permanent Security Council members who are to receive only an edited copy. Syria, a key Middle East player bordering Iraq, and other smaller nations are complaining of being treated as second-class powers.

The US got unanimous support last month for a tough Security Council resolution threatening Iraq with serious consequences if it failed to co-operate with the UN arms experts returning after a four-year gap.

The experts, in their third week after returning to Baghdad, have intensified their inspections since the dossier was handed over.

Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the inspectors, said teams had visited six sites yesterday and had completed a two-day check on a uranium extraction plant near the Syrian border.

One team went to a factory for missile and tank parts at the Karamah complex near Baghdad.

The factory was built in 1999, after inspectors left the country, but Iraq said nothing illegal was being done there.

"The whole site is under monitoring but the factory itself was searched for the first time," said its director, Brigadier Kamel Saeed.

Ueki said Iraq had included the site in a declaration it submitted on October 1, weeks before handing over the much bigger dossier last weekend.

The plant is part of a complex run by the Karamah Public Company, part of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission.

"We make precision parts for al-Somoud missiles," Saeed said.

The 18m rocket has a maximum range of 150km, which is permitted under the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire terms.

Saeed said a previous facility at the site was bombed in late 1998.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Iraq