IRAQ: UN arms inspectors are ready to return to Iraq and are waiting for a green light from the Security Council to resume a hunt for arms of mass destruction, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said.
"I don't personally expect that green light to come today, but we're ready when and if that green light does come, whether it's a day from now or weeks from now," Mr Mark Gwozdecky, the spokesman for the IAEA, said.
UN arms inspectors in New York and Iraq's top arms experts agreed on Tuesday to meet in about 10 days in Vienna to discuss logistics for the inspectors' return. No firm date has been set.
The IAEA's Iraq action team handles nuclear-related issues.
UNMOVIC, the New York-based UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission looks after biological and chemical arms and missile technology.
The teams co-operate on inspections, which Baghdad agreed to resume under threat of a military attack by the US.
Although the inspectors were ready to leave at any moment, Mr Gwozdecky said talks between the UN and Iraq would probably have to take place before inspectors arrive in Baghdad.
The talks needed to cover issues such as landing rights, visas, office space and communications.
In an address to the IAEA annual meeting yesterday, the chairman of Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission said the decision to let UN inspectors return proved Baghdad had no weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological or nuclear - to hide.
Mr Fadhil al-Janabi, minister and chairman of the Iraqi AEC, also told the conference that UN sanctions should be dropped now that Baghdad was willing to let the UN inspectors back.
The Iraqi government's decision "on the unconditional return of weapons inspectors is clear evidence of the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction as well as of its co-operation on the implementation of UN security \ resolutions".
"In return we ask the UN Security Council . . . to meet their obligations toward Iraq in an effective manner to secure lifting of the unjust embargo imposed on Iraq," he said.
After the 1991 Gulf War, UNSCOM inspectors in Iraq oversaw the destruction of 38,500 chemical arms components, 690 tonnes of chemical arms agents, over 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals, 48 missiles, 14 conventional warheads, six launchers, 28 launch pads, 30 chemical warheads, various super-gun components and a biological weapons factory.
Before leaving in 1998, UNSCOM said it could not account for some warhead missiles, 17 tonnes of material needed to produce biological agents, and possibly the ingredients to make as much as 200 tonnes of nerve gas. - (Reuters)