Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that Iraq had cooperated in opening sites for inspection but had fallen short in filling in the gaps in last month's declaration of its weapons programs.
"Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it," Blix told the UN Security Council in a keenly awaited update on the inspectors' work.
While Baghdad had provided inspectors with access to the sites they wanted to visit, it had failed to resolve major outstanding questions about its arms programs, put conditions on guaranteeing the safety of overflights by U-2 spy planes and failed to account for supplies of anthrax it said it had made and later destroyed.
PHOTO: AP
"It might still exist," he said, referring to suspected stocks of anthrax.
Iraq had also failed to account for 6,500 chemical warfare bombs mentioned in a document turned over to inspectors last month, he said.
Even before he began to deliver his report, Washington's ambassador to the UN said Iraq's cooperation had not been unconditional and the White House said this would be regarded as a failure to meet a UN disarmament resolution that threatened serious consequences if Iraq failed to comply.
"The United States will read the Blix report to see one thing and one thing very simple. Is Iraq complying yes or no? ... If the answer is only partially yes then the answer is no," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
He said that, under terms of a UN resolution passed in November, Iraq must provide a "full, final and complete" accounting of its weapons. "It must comply in all regards, not in some regards, not in half regards, not in some areas but not other areas," Fleischer said.
Time was running out for Iraq to comply, he said, but Bush had not yet set a deadline.
Iraq denies it has weapons of mass destruction.
At the UN, US ambassador John Negroponte said Iraq was not cooperating unconditionally with inspectors.
The inspectors' report comes a day ahead of Bush's annual State of the Union message to a joint session of Congress, during which he is expected to lay out his case for possible war against Iraq.
In a possible foreshadowing of the speech, US officials in recent days have revived accusations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had links to the al-Qaeda militant network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US that killed more than 3,000 people.
Fleischer, asked whether there was new evidence to bolster the claim, said only "this is a story that's unfolding."
"The president will continue to discuss this," Fleischer said.
Earlier yesterday, the Iraqi foreign minister accused US Secretary of State Colin Powell of a "series of lies" alleging Iraq has not cooperated with UN arms monitors, and said he hoped the chief inspectors would deliver an "objective" report.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri also described US complaints about Iraqi scientists' refusal of private interviews with inspectors as a diversionary tactic, stemming from Washington's failure to produce concrete evidence of any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
"You ask us to force them," he said at a news conference. "Even in your countries can you force anybody to be interviewed?"
Iraqis waited for the UN judgment day confident they would get a "gray" report, a passing grade, for accepting arms inspections, but wary of UN complaints that could help tilt the balance between war and peace. The US and British governments threaten to invade this country if, in their view, it has not sufficiently complied with the UN disarmament demands.
Iraq hoped for a UN report that "will present facts as they are, that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," Sabri said. "And we hope the Security Council will lift the criminal sanctions on the Iraqi people."
He said Powell told a "series of lies" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, over the weekend "about Iraq not cooperating over the last 11 years" with UN arms inspections.
He noted that UN monitors, in their new round of field missions in Iraq, have mounted almost 500 inspections without incident "to offices, guesthouses, mosques, universities, hospitals, factories, military sites."
"How were those things done without Iraqi cooperation?" he asked.
On scientists' interviews, he said Iraq was meeting its UN obligation by "providing access" to weapons specialists. It is "hair-splitting," he said, to complain that the handful asked to submit to interviews without an Iraqi official monitoring -- a US demand -- have refused to do so.
Inspectors feel scientists would be more candid without a government monitor present. American officials allege, without citing evidence, the Iraqi leadership has threatened to kill scientists who disclose sensitive information.
Sabri said the scientists fear, instead, that their words might be changed after private interviews. In Western countries, he asked, "can you force them to answer without the presence of their lawyer?"
He said the controversy was stirred up by the US "because they have found nothing. They have no evidence, because there is nothing."
He said of Washington and London, "their aim it to occupy the country ... to control its oil." He referred to US and British leaders as "warmongers" who "export evil to other countries."
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