Inspections roll on as West piles pressure on Iraq

UN arms experts swooped on two sites during their fifth day of inspections in Iraq yesterday with the full cooperation of Iraqi authorities anxious to avoid any row that might hasten war.

A sceptical US President George W. Bush planned to turn up the pressure on President Saddam Hussein to meet a UN deadline for declaring any weapons of mass destruction, while Britain released a 23-page dossier accusing the Iraqi strongman of rights abuses.

"The president wants to make certain that Saddam Hussein has no weapons and is not in violation of the United Nations. The president is sceptical that Saddam Hussein will comply," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

He said it was too early to say whether Iraq was cooperating with resumed United Nations weapons inspections. "It's too soon to say. One week is not adequate time," he said.

Inspectors visited a military industrial complex in Baghdad and distilleries to the northeast and both inspections seemed to go without a hitch.

Stressing that their mission is still in its early days, the inspectors say they have found no evidence yet of banned weapons programmes and encountered no obstruction by Iraqi authorities.

In one of the longest inspections of a single site to date, a team of inspectors spent just over six hours at Karamah (Dignity) compound run by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission in the Wazireyah industrial district of the capital.

Brigadier Mohammad Saleh Mohammad, commander of the compound, told reporters the facility was involved in the production - mainly the design - of missiles permitted by UN Security Council resolutions. Iraq is allowed to only have missiles with a range of 150 kilometres or less.

The officer, who said previous inspection teams had visited the facility several times in the 1990s, said the inspectors had been given complete access to the site.

"They saw almost all documents, inspected all buildings on the site and interviewed some of the employees. There was no problem and the whole inspection process went on smoothly," he said.

Brigadier Issam Dawood said the site was heavily bombed during an assault by British and US warplanes in 1998 for Iraq's alleged failure to cooperate with the inspectors.

Another inspection team spent about 90 minutes at private distilleries that produce alcoholic drinks near Khan Abi Sa'ad, some 30 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. It was not immediately clear why the experts went there.

The inspectors barred any movement from or to Karamah complex, located a few kilometres from their base at the former Canal Hotel on the outskirts of the capital.

The compound has a high fence around it. A large placard at the main entrance showed Saddam with the slogan: "The eagle remains free."

Iraq complained to the United Nations over a Western air raid on its southern port city of Basra and urged the world body to end US and British air patrols over the country.

Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in a letter to UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan, described Sunday's raid as part of a "barbaric terrorist aggression" against Iraq.

Iraqi officials said the bombing killed four people at oil company offices. The US military insisted its planes had launched "precision-guided" weapons at Iraqi air defences and that they always took pains to avoid hitting civilians.

The United States and Britain impose two "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.

"Until you take measures to end this barbaric terrorist aggression and lay the full responsibility for it on the governments of the United States and Britain, the Iraqi people and its army will continue to practice Iraq's legitimate right of self-defence," Sabri said in the letter, his second to Annan in two days about the no-fly zones.

Russia was also critical of the raid. A foreign ministry statement said "using force without the agreement of the UN Security Council can only complicate the mission of international inspectors in Iraq".

The British government, Washington's staunchest military ally, released a report of alleged rights violations.

The dossier accused the Iraqi leadership of systematic torture, including acid baths, rape and mass executions, and said Saddam had a "cruel and callous disregard for human life".

It detailed alleged abuses against political prisoners and Iraq's Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims.

"These grave violations of human rights are not the work of a number of overzealous individuals but the deliberate policy of the regime," the report said. "Fear is Saddam's chosen method for staying in power."

The inspectors returned to Iraq last week for the first time in four years under a new UN Security Council mandate. The United States has threatened war on Iraq if it fails to comply with the UN resolution.

Iraq denies it has any such arms and has pledged full cooperation with the inspectors. It must submit a declaration of any banned weapons by December 8.