Iraq urged to comply with make-or-break inspections

World leaders pressed Iraq to comply with UN weapons inspections and UN officials in the Iraqi capital said yesterday they were ready for the first 18 experts who start a search for any banned arms on Wednesday.

At the premises of Baghdad's former Canal Hotel, the United Nations monitoring centre was declared ready.

"We are in a position to receive the first group. But we still have a lot of cleaning to do," Yashuhiro Ueki, the inspection mission's spokesman in Iraq told reporters.

His colleagues were busy fixing broken windows and sweeping up mess accumulated since the last inspectors left in 1998.

On Saturday, western warplanes hammered targets in southern Iraq while in Bucharest US President George W. Bush kept up the war of words by comparing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac said the UN inspections were essential to clear up any doubt over whether Saddam was still harbouring weapons of mass destruction.

He told a news conference war would be in no one's interest. "I hope that everyone is aware that war is always the worst of solutions, and that it is in nobody's interest," he said.

Chirac's call was reinforced by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers, who said after a meeting in Moscow that Iraq must fulfill its commitments to allow UN inspectors to search for any banned weapons.

Iraq insists it has no biological, chemical or nuclear arms. In Washington, the US military said Western planes bombed a mobile radar system south of Al Amarah, some 265 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, on Saturday.

Iraq had moved the radar into the southern no-fly zone imposed after the 1991 Gulf War, the US Central Command said in a statement, adding the radar provided tracking and guidance for surface-to-air missile systems. It did not say whether Iraqi forces had fired at Western aircraft patrolling the zone.

In Bucharest, Bush told tens of thousands of Romanians their misery under communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu showed that aggressive dictators like Saddam must be stopped.

"You know the difference between good and evil because you have seen evil's face. The people of Romania understand that aggressive dictators cannot be appeased or ignored, they must always be opposed," said Bush, making his final stop on a five-day tour of ex-communist East Europe.

A huge crowd cheered as Bush linked the courage of the people in formerly communist countries who rose up against oppressive rulers or Soviet domination with the obligation he himself feels to tackle the Iraqi president.

Bush used the finale of his five-day visit to Europe, a speech to tens of thousands of rain-soaked Romanians in Bucharest's Revolution Square, to beat the drum once more for action against Saddam, a central theme of his trip.

"An aggressive dictator now rules in Iraq... The dictator of Iraq threatens the security of every free nation, including the free nations of Europe," Bush said, adding that the world had seen enough of "fanatics who impose their will through fear".

In Baghdad, Ueki said a hotline was being set up linking the inspection mission's operations centre in the Canal Hotel and the National Monitoring Directorate of Iraq.

"The hotline is usually for crisis management," he added. "So if trouble happens we need to communicate with each other."

Twenty tonnes of equipment has been flown into Baghdad from Larnaca, Cyprus, by UN aircraft, including communications gear, computers, furniture and medicines.

Iraq has vowed to meet a December 8 deadline to produce a full account of its weapons programme and said UN inspectors would be given free access to all sites across the country.

By January 27 the inspectors must have given their first report to the UN Security Council.

Iraq's official media launched more verbal salvos at the United States yesterday.

"After launching an aggression on Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting terrorism...they focused their feverish aggressive efforts towards Iraq," al-Jumhuriya daily said.

"Every time Iraq shoots down any excuse of the aggressive excuses of the Bush administration, they show the world yet another excuse," said the official al-Thawra newspaper, mouthpiece of the ruling Ba'ath Party.

Al-Jumhuriya said UN inspections must be "professional, unbiased and clean and free of American pressure and haggling".

In Washington, the US News and World Report said senior Bush administration officials were mulling a three-stage plan for governing a post-war Iraq that was put together by an inter-agency task force dubbed the Executive Steering Group.

The magazine said that under the first phase Iraq would be ruled by the military, almost certainly a US general. The second phase would be an international civilian administration, entailing a diminished US military presence.

Under the third phase, power would be transferred to a representative, multi-ethnic Iraqi government after a constitutional convention, according to the magazine.

The New York Times said on Saturday that Turkish officials were preparing to send troops up to 100 kilometres into northern Iraq on what they say is a mission to prevent an influx of refugees in the event of a war in Iraq.

On Friday, Turkish General Hilmi Akin Zorlu, commander of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, said he feared that a war against Iraq could lead to "terrorist" attacks on his forces in Kabul.