UN arms inspectors were testing Iraq's promises to cooperate with them yesterday as the US lobbied for an international green light to attack Iraq if it violates UN weap-ons resolutions.
An Iraqi delegation was meeting the weapons experts in Vienna for a second and final day of talks on the return of inspectors to Iraq in an attempt to prevent a threatened military strike by the US and Britain.
The extent to which Iraq satisfies the inspectors that it will give truly free access to potential weapons sites may determine whether leading members of the UN Security Council back any US-sponsored resolution threatening the use of force.
But in Baghdad, Iraq said it would not be intimidated into accepting a new resolution by threats of war.
"To the evil ones ... we clearly say that if they imagine that drums of war which they are beating ... may push Iraq to concede its national rights and what has been guaranteed to it by the UN Charter and relevant security council resolutions, they are mistaken," said a statement issued after a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Saddam Hussein.
In Vienna, chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix said negotiators were working hard to agree the practicalities of renewed inspections.
"It is better to have discussions, and detailed discussions, here than to have discussions when you arrive ... And we still have things to go through," he told reporters.
The talks are the first test of Iraq's cooperation since Baghdad agreed on Sept. 16 to the unconditional return of the inspectors under threat of a US military strike.
A senior diplomat close to the talks said he expected the Iraqi team to provide information about their nuclear facilities on Tuesday as a goodwill gesture.
Iraq has not provided this information, due every six months, since December 1998, when UN inspectors left Baghdad on the eve of a punitive US-British bombing campaign.
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