IRAQ: The chief UN weapons inspectors, Dr Hans Blix and Dr Mohamed El Baradei, are expected to go to Baghdad later this month despite a letter they wrote which appeared to put conditions on the trip, UN officials have said.
Iraq yesterday rejected any conditions for the visit, part of last-ditch efforts to secure Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions as the United States prepares for possible war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction it says Baghdad has.
The trip, expected on February 8th, falls a few days before another key report by the inspectors to the UN Security Council on February 14th and may be their last report before the US makes a final decision on whether to attack.
On Saturday Iraq said that Dr Blix and Dr El Baradei had agreed to go to Baghdad next Saturday. Spokesmen for both UN officials confirmed the visit.
Dr Blix's spokesman said he assumed that 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," Mr Ewen Buchanan said, adding the trip appeared to be on.
The letter set down an agenda for the visit and urged some UN demands to be fulfilled before the trip, such as unrestricted flights by U-2 surveillance planes over Iraq and private interviews with Iraqi experts.
It said the inspectors expected Iraq to provide data missing from a declaration on its weapons that Baghdad made on December 7th, such as the whereabouts of previously established stocks of the deadly chemical agent VX and anthrax.
The Iraqi Vice President, Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan, said the visit was going ahead without conditions. "The visit is normal."
Dr Blix is executive chairman of UNMOVIC, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons.
Dr El Baradei is director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for nuclear arms teams.
Also yesterday, the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, Mr Hussam Mohammad Amin, repeated the earlier Iraqi position that his government could not guarantee the safety of U-2 aircraft if they entered US-British no-flight zones. "How could we secure the safety of the U-2 airplane while such warfare is going on? It is so difficult," he asked.
On the private interviews, Mr Amin 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 the talks would touch on Dr Blix's report to the UN at the end of last month in which he sharply criticised Iraq for not fully accounting for its chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles.
Mr Amin said the inspectors had visited 548 sites, including 84 which had never been inspected before, since they resumed inspections in November after a four-year gap.
He denied US and British reports that Iraq had mobile units which produced 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, Mr Amin said.
Dr Blix in comments on Friday also said he had not knowledge of such laboratories.
UN inspectors searched at least nine sites in Iraq yesterday for banned weapons, some visiting a high explosives store and a dairy factory while others flew by helicopter to locations further from Baghdad.
In Istanbul, meanwhile, Turkish engineering and artillery units set off for the south-eastern border with Iraq, though the government has so far resisted pressure to let US troops use Turkish bases as staging posts for an invasion.
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq al Shara, appealed to the European Union to help avert a unilateral US attack on Iraq and save the region from "more violence, more terrorism, more anarchy . . . more bloodshed."
The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, has said he will provide the Security Council on Wednesday with proof of Iraq's possession of banned weapons programmes.
The Iraqi deputy prime minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, says any such evidence will be "fabrications and lies".