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.
"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.
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