Inspector says Iraq offers access but not enough substance

Baghdad - The chief United Nations arms inspector made it clear to the Security Council today that Iraq's cooperation had been strictly limited and that Baghdad had still not come to genuinely accept the disarmament that the world demanded of it.

Baghdad is allowing access to sites but is providing little in the way of substance, the inspector, Hans Blix, told the council in his report on the first 60 days of the inspectors' work.

In a separate report, Mohamed ElBaradei, in charge of nuclear teams as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made a direct appeal for more time for inspections.

He said that so far his teams had found no evidence that "Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program."

Mr. Blix declared: "The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect, and with one exception, it has been prompt."

But "it is not enough to open doors," he added. "Inspection is not a game of catch-as-catch-can. Rather, as I noted, it is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence.

"It is not built upon the premise of trust; rather it is designed to lead to trust if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items."

He said his disarmament commission was "not presuming there were proscribed items in Iraq." Nor he said, was he "assuming that that no such items exist in Iraq."

He said Iraq had declared that it had not weaponized the nerve agent VX and that the small amount that remained after the gulf war had been destroyed in 1991.

The United Nations, however, "has information that conflicts with this account,"he said.

"There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization, and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared."

On anthrax, Mr. Blix said, "There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist."

On missiles, Mr. Blix said there were significant questions about whether Iraq retained Scud-type weapons after the gulf war.

"Iraq declared the consumption of a number of Scud missiles as targets in the development of antiballistic missile defense system during the 1980's, yet no technical information has been produced about that program, or data on the consumption of the missiles."

Mr. Blix also questioned the development of two other missiles — the liquid-fueled Al-Samoud II, and the solid propellant Al Fatah. Both, he said, have been tested beyond the permitted 150-kilometer range, and that some of both types of missiles had been provided to the Iraqi Army.

"These missiles might well represent prima facie cases of proscribed systems," Mr. Blix said.

"The test ranges in excess of 150 kilometers are significant, but some further technical considerations need to be made before we reach a conclusion on this issue. In the meantime, we have asked Iraq to cease flight test of both missiles."

He added: "Let me be specific. Information provided by member states tells us about the movement and concealment of missiles and chemical weapons and mobile units for biological weapons production. We shall certainly follow up any credible leads given to us and report what we might find, as well as any denial of access."

While the Bush administration appears close to declaring that weapons inspections in Iraq have ended in failure, United Nations inspectors say their work is just getting started.

The dispute that has divided the United States from other permanent powers on the Security Council — including France, Russia and China — was set off by the issue of timing: Should the inspections continue for weeks or perhaps months, as the Europeans and others contend, or have they already produced enough results for the Council to conclude they have failed, as the United States insists?

What underlies the debate are different assessments of Iraq's weapons capabilities, with the United States asserting, without providing complete evidence, that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction.

To many inspectors, it is too early to make any evaluation of their work. "We obviously need more time," said an official of the team inspecting nuclear facilities. "We are just reaching a fully operational level. You can't expect us to have great progress or results in only two months."

The arms chiefs have worked to get their two teams under way at top speed, beating several deadlines in Council resolutions. They started work in Iraq on Nov. 27 with 17 inspectors, and now have about 100 chemical, biological and missile experts for Mr. Blix's group and about a dozen nuclear inspectors for Mr. ElBaradei's.

In two months, the inspectors have been to about 400 sites. But most of these visits were to check on the situation at sites inspectors had investigated before December 1998, the last time inspectors were able to work before they were barred by Iraq for four years.

The inspectors' job has been complicated by ambivalence in the Bush administration, United Nations officials said. American intelligence officials, wary of leaks to Iraq, decided only in late December to share higher quality information with the inspection teams about what sites to visit and which Iraqi arms experts to interview. Even Mr. Blix, normally carefully diplomatic, became exasperated by the wait, telling reporters he felt that American officials were "librarians who did not want to lend out the books."

The discovery by inspectors on Jan. 16 of classified documents in the home of an Iraqi scientist was a result, in part, of the improved intelligence, United Nations officials and diplomats said.

But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz indicated in a speech on Thursday that the administration still did not entirely trust the inspectors' systems for keeping data secret. He said the administration anticipates that Iraq will use "cyber-intrusions to steal inspection methods, criteria and findings" from the inspectors' computers. Some administration officials said last week that a leak had allowed Iraq to "clean up" one site the inspectors planned to visit.

Administration officials and Mr. Blix also differed over interviews with Iraqi weapons experts. While administration officials insisted that the inspectors must conduct interviews outside Iraq, Mr. Blix argued that confidential interviews in the country might be less conspicuous and more productive. The point has become moot: so far the Iraqi authorities have not encouraged their weapons experts to consent to interviews without government officials present, so no scientist has agreed to a private meeting. -- New York Times

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