Inspectors give mixed verdict

UN arms experts yesterday gave a mixed interim verdict on Iraqi weapons, which is likely to provide ammunition both to those backing US preparations for a possible conflict and for the anti-war camp.

Chief inspector Hans Blix said his teams had so far found no "smoking gun" in Iraq but added Baghdad had failed to answer "many questions" about its weapons programmes. Iraq said it would answer them.

Washington appeared unimpressed with Blix's double-edged comments.

"The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke," a White House spokesman told reporters. "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

Blix's remarks, made to reporters as he prepared to brief members of the UN Security Council, were interpreted by the markets as making war more likely, and oil prices quickly rose.

In the nearly seven weeks since inspections resumed in Iraq, he said, "we have been covering the country in ever-wider sweeps, and we haven't found any smoking guns".

But Blix, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons inspections, said inspectors were dissatisfied with the 12,000-page document Iraq submitted in December after the UN Security Council demanded it supply a full account of its arms programmes.

"We think that the declaration failed to answer a great many questions," Blix said."

Within hours, a senior Iraqi official said Iraq was ready to respond to questions over its declaration and insisted UN inspections had vindicated its claim to have no banned arms.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog which is separately responsible for investigating nuclear-related activity in Iraq, was also reporting to the UN Security Council yesterday.

"To date, no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities has been detected, although not all of the laboratory results of sample analysis are yet available," Mohamed ElBaradei said.

He said aluminium tubes suspected of being part of an Iraqi nuclear arms programme were in fact unsuitable for that use.

The arms inspections in Iraq are based on a November UN resolution which threatened the oil-rich state with "serious consequences" if it failed to cooperate with the UN teams.

Washington and Britain, its staunchest ally, are anxious to stress that the verdicts of inspectors are not necessarily a make-or-break "trigger" for war.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair told his cabinet that a January 27 formal progress report on inspections in Iraq should not be regarded as a deadline for a decision on military action.

But he added that Britain had confidence in Blix and that the UN inspection process was "not a façade".

US Secretary of State Colin Powell also tried to deflect attention from January 27.

"At that point, we will have to make some judgments as to what to do next... But it is not necessarily a D-day for decision-making," Powell told the Washington Post.