IRAQ: UN arms inspectors showed off state-of-the-art equipment yesterday and reminded President Saddam Hussein that his own palace complexes would no longer be off limits when they resumed their hunt for banned Iraqi weapons.
When the team resumes its work today after four years away, it will be better equipped than its predecessors and have a stronger UN mandate to overcome any Iraqi prevarication, senior inspectors told reporters in Baghdad.
UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan reminded Iraq that failure to co-operate - or to prove its assertions that it has no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons - could trigger a US-led attack.
"I believe war is avoidable," he told France's Le Monde newspaper. "It is avoidable if President Saddam Hussein honours his commitments made at the United Nations and co-operates fully with the inspectors."
Before inspectors pulled out in late 1998, complaining they were being obstructed, restrictions on visits to vast complexes that Iraq deemed "presidential sites" were a bone of contention.
"The issue of the presidential palaces has been resolved by Resolution 1441," said Mr Dimitri Perricos, the Greek leader of the inspections team from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).
"It is not a matter of leaving (the palaces) for last and it's not an issue of being first," Mr Perricos said. "They will be visited when it is required and according to plan, and I can assure you we are not going to tell you."
The inspectors also showed some of the equipment that had been flown to Baghdad ahead of the first round of inspections.
It included apparatus reflecting technological advances over the past four years that, they said, would give them better, quicker evidence of suspicious activity.
Under the UN resolution, Baghdad has until December 8th to provide the Security Council with an initial report on its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
State media yesterday repeated the official line that it does not have any, having already complied with UN resolutions dating back to the 1991 Gulf War demanding Iraqi disarmament.
"The truth is that the weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed," said Al-Thawra, the newspaper of the ruling Baath Party. "All the means to produce them were destroyed, confiscated or made redundant, including some buildings, furniture and cooling devices and other things."
But given Washington's conviction that Iraq does indeed possess banned armaments, US President Bush has warned that Saddam would be entering his "final stage" were he to stick to such a blanket denial in two weeks' time.
Chief UN inspector Mr Hans Blix said on Monday that Baghdad would have to provide convincing proof it had no such weapons.
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose officials are running the nuclear inspections, said, however, that a simple oversight on the part of Baghdad would not automatically trigger a breach of the resolution.
"We are governed by reason and logic in our work. If there was an oversight in a secondary issue, then of course we will not rush to the Security Council and say Iraq is not co-operating," Mr Mohamed ElBaradei told Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper.
Mr Annan told Le Monde that it would take many months to complete the inspections: "The inspectors have indicated that if the Iraqis co-operate fully, the work can be done in a year." The inspectors must give their first report to the Security Council by January 27th.
UNMOVIC's Mr Perricos, and Jacques Baute, the Frenchman leading the IAEA's team of nuclear inspectors, spoke to reporters about their preparations at Baghdad's former Canal Hotel, which serves as the inspection team operations centre.
They refused to disclose which sites would be visited tomorrow but said the hunt overall would take them to places declared by Iraq, to previously visited sites, to places that have been importing materials that need to be verified, and to newly suspect sites identified from satellite photographs.
Their equipment includes sophisticated ground-penetrating radar that can uncover underground facilities as well as radioactive isotope detectors. On display on a table next to them were plastic vials and containers for collecting samples, as well as filters and other laboratory equipment.
Twenty tonnes of equipment have already been flown to Baghdad from Larnaca, in Cyprus, including communications gear, computers, furniture and medicines.
By mid-December the team will be equipped with helicopters which will facilitate monitoring large sites during inspections.
"When we arrive at a site, the first thing that we do is request the freezing of movements," Mr Perricos said. "We don't want cars and people to go out of the site carrying things, and we don't want to have cars entering the site bringing things.
Journalists will be barred from accompanying inspectors.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, who is in the US, is expected to meet the UN's chief weapons inspector, Mr Blix, today.