The top UN disarmament officials are expected to go to Baghdad at the end of the week despite a letter they wrote that appeared to put conditions on the trip, UN officials say.
Yesterday Iraq 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.
But the spokesman for UN inspection chief Mr Hans Blix said he assumed the Iraqis had accepted the purpose of the meeting as laid out in the letter sent on Friday.
The letter set down an agenda for the visit and urged some UN demands to be fulfilled before the trip. These included the overflights by U2 spyplanes and private interviews with Iraqi scientists.
The inspectors also 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 trip, expected on Saturday, falls a few days before another key report by the inspectors to the UN Security Council on February 14th. It may be their last report before the United States makes a final decision on whether to attack.
Syrian Foreign Minister Mr Farouq al Shara has 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".
British Labour politician Mr Tony Benn said in Baghdad he had conducted the first television interview with Iraq's President Saddam Hussein in more than a decade and he hoped it would be aired within the next day or two.
Mr Benn, a 77-year-old former member of the British parliament, said he asked Saddam very simple and short questions covering weapons of mass destruction, links to al-Qaeda and oil. He would not reveal Saddam's answers.