Iraq says U.N. teams have found no weapons

Baghdad - The Iraqi government said today that United Nations weapons inspectors had thus far failed, after five weeks of visits to some 230 sites, to uncover any weapons of mass destruction or evidence of other prohibited programs.

"The inspectors did not find any prohibited activities nor any prohibited items in those 230 sites visited up until now," Lt. Gen. Hussam Muhammad Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison to the inspectors, told a weekly news conference.

The general said that his teams of scientists and engineers who accompanied the inspectors had a pretty good sense of what was examined during inspection visits and that they had reported nothing unusual.

"They can of course notice anything which is abnormal which exists at any of the sites visited daily," he said, noting that his liaison officers also attend all the meetings and hence can evaluate the inspectors' activity.

"All those activities proved that the Iraqi declarations are credible and the American allegations and claims are baseless," General Amin said.

He also said that Hans Blix, the chief inspector for biological and chemical weapons, was due to visit Baghdad during the third week of January, just before the Jan. 27 formal deadline for him to report to the Security Council on the findings of his teams thus far.

Up to this point, the United Nations has not disclosed any information about what its inspectors have found.

In an appearance at the Security Council on Dec. 19 to discuss the Iraqi declaration, Mr. Blix suggested that Baghdad was respecting the letter but not the spirit of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which resumed the inspections. He suggested that Iraq still had not provided enough evidence on the outcome of its attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Iraq has said repeatedly that all the information about its programs was included in the 12,000-page report handed over to the Security Council on Dec. 8 and that it has no new information to offer.

In his remarks, General Amin echoed comments by Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, who complained earlier in the day about troop buildups in the region, saying that the United States and Britain were forging ahead toward war despite the presence of the inspectors in Iraq.

"The American administration is trying to create some pretexts to attack Iraq, to exercise their aggression against Iraq," he said. -- New York Times

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