The White House on Tuesday all-but dismissed UN disarmament inspectors as useless in post-war Iraq, saying US-led forces had replaced them in the hunt for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's alleged forbidden weapons.
"Make no mistake about it: The United States and the coalition have taken on the responsibility for dismantling Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction]," said spokesman Ari Fleischer. "We're looking forward, not backwards."
The comments came after the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, condemned the pre-war efforts of British and American intelligence to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and insisted that, without UN verification, their postwar inspections lacked credibility.
"We may not be the only ones in the world who have credibility, but I do think we have credibility for being objective and independent," he said.
Blix, who is due to retire from his post in June, briefed the UN Security Council on his readiness to send inspection teams back to Iraq.
Fleischer urged the UN Security Council not to follow its requirement that it certify Iraq free of prohibited arms before it can lift punishing economic sanctions that would likely hamper reconstruction efforts.
Existing resolutions call for the council to act following a report from UN inspectors.
"The regime is now history. The sanctions should become history, too," he said. "The United Nations has at its disposal the ability to lift sanctions ... if they so choose. The president hopes they will.
"The United Nations has the ability to pass new resolutions that supersede old resolutions, particularly when the old resolutions were predicated on the existence of a regime that is now gone."
Those comments set the stage for a fresh clash at the council, where Russia -- which joined France and Germany in opposing the US-led military campaign -- has said the two issues remain linked.
"We all want to know that there is no WMD in Iraq and the only way to verify is to have inspectors in Iraq to see for themselves and report to the Security Council," said Sergei Lavrov, Russia's UN ambassador.
France, however, has called for an "immediate" suspension of UN sanctions, but gave few details on how this could be accomplished.
Iraq has been under comprehensive sanctions -- including an arms embargo, a trade ban, an air embargo, diplomatic sanctions and a freeze on its assets and financial dealings -- since it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
Although US President George W. Bush cited Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as a key reason for war, the US has yet to herald the discovery of any banned arms caches.
Failure to find such weapons could prove embarrassing, and some critics of the administration have warned that excluding UN inspectors risks fuelling speculation that Washington planted any weapons it finds.
"This is a very cautious approach, a very accurate approach, and I think that at the end of the day, when the weapons are found, there will be no dispute among ... reasonable people," countered Fleischer.
The spokesman also reiterated Washington's steely certitude that US-led "coalition" forces will find weapons of mass destruction -- which Saddam's regime denied having.
"We know they exist and we're confident that they will be found," said Fleischer, who lashed out at Blix for charging in an interview that US and British evidence of such weapons was "shaky."
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