IRAQ: UN arms experts interviewed a key Iraqi scientist and inspected three suspect sites yesterday as the UN refugee chief warned a war with Iraq would be a human calamity and must be launched only with UN approval.
UN spokesman Mr Hiro Ueki said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iraq had interviewed a metallurgist from a high-profile state company, but the scientist, Dr Kathim Jamil, denied any links to Iraq's nuclear programme.
"He provided technical details of a military programme," Mr Ueki said in a statement in Baghdad.
"This programme has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear programme."
Mr Ueki said the scientist's answers "will be of great use in completing the IAEA assessment" of Iraq's nuclear programme.
But Dr Jamil said he had not provided information about a military programme.
"I have nothing to do with any programmes. I'm a metallurgist working on restoring aluminium tubes," he told Iraqi television.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Dr Jamil was a specialist in the use of aluminium tubes used to produce 81-mm missiles with a range of 10 km.
It said the interview, at Baghdad's al-Rasheed Hotel, was attended by an Iraqi monitoring official and lasted one hour.
The United States and Britain have raised the alarm in recent months over alleged attempts by Iraq to buy aluminium tubes that could be used to process uranium. Iraq denied the charges and said it had had the tubes since the 1980s.
Inspectors from the IAEA and a UN mission toured the Modern Company for Brewery and other sites yesterday as the mission to scour Iraq for traces of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons entered its second month.
Iraq said on Thursday the experts had found no evidence of banned weapons.
The inspectors are now starting to interview scientists who worked on now abandoned weapons programmes.
The 100-plus inspectors - whose predecessors left the country in 1998 after Baghdad halted co-operation - are due to issue their next report on January 9th and a final one on January 27th, and speculation is growing that this could spark war.
A UN Security Council resolution last month gave Iraq a last chance to come clean on its weapons programmes, as required by resolutions stemming back to the 1991 Gulf War - or face the consequences, which is diplomatic speak for possible war.
World oil prices rose again yesterday because of the combined effect of the Venezuelan strike and fears of a US attack on Iraq in the New Year.
Crude prices are now $10 a barrel higher than at the start of 2002. America, still embroiled in Afghanistan and building up forces in the Gulf, also faced a shock confrontation with North Korea, which has said it will revive its nuclear programme and announced yesterday it was expelling UN nuclear inspectors.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ordered the US Navy to prepare two aircraft carriers and two amphibious assault vessels for possible action in Iraq, defence officials said today. The orders, sent in the last two days, require the Navy to have the vessels ready to sail to the Gulf within 96 hours after a certain date, which officials declined to specify.
The ships and the escorts of cruisers, destroyers and submarines would bring a powerful military presence to the region, adding several warships, scores of strike aircraft and around 2,500 Marines to forces in the region.
Turkey yesterday said its support for military action against Iraq depended on a UN resolution, as the US sought to convince its ally it would be compensated for damages a war might cause to its fragile economy. - (Reuters, AFP)