Iraqi President Saddam Hussein accused UN inspectors of engaging in "intelligence work" instead of searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Iraq has denied it is hiding.
The inspectors were interested in collecting names of Iraqi scientists, putting questions to them that indicate "hidden agendas" and gathering information about military facilities, Saddam said in a televised speech marking Iraq's Army Day.
"All or most" of such activities "constitute purely intelligence work," Saddam said.
Under a Security Council resolution passed in November, wea-pons inspectors are in the country to establish whether Iraq still has chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them.
Iraq has denied it has such weapons, but the US and Britain have accused it of hiding banned arms.
US President George W. Bush and other US officials have threatened to attack Iraq and topple Saddam's regime if it does not eliminate all weapons of mass destruction as required by UN resolutions adopted after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday said that war with Iraq had become less likely. But Straw, speaking in an interview with BBC radio, wouldn't say why he thought the chances of war had diminished.
"I've repeated that war is not inevitable and that the preference of the international community is for [the situation] to be resolved peacefully," Straw said.
In his speech, Saddam accused the US of trying to push the UN inspectors to go beyond the declared objective of the Security Council, "even in the bad resolution issued in its name," specifically mentioning American efforts to persuade the inspection teams to be more aggressive about questioning Iraqi scientists about the country's arms programs.
Saddam did not say whether his suspicions about the inspectors would lead Iraq to stop cooperating with them. Other Iraqi officials have expressed concerns about the manner in which the inspectors were carrying out their work, but said Iraq would continue to cooperate to prove it has no banned weapons and to avoid war.
Early last month, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan accused the inspectors of gathering intelligence for Washington and Israel, saying "their work is to spy to serve the CIA and Mossad."
Ramadan's accusations followed a surprise search of one of Saddam's palaces, and were quickly denied by Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for chief inspector Hans Blix.
Buchanan said Blix has made clear that anyone found working for individual governments rather than the UN Security Council would be fired.
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