UN inspectors to go ahead with Iraq visit

The top UN disarmament officials are expected to go to Baghdad later this month despite a letter they wrote that appeared to put conditions on the trip, UN officials said.

Iraq yesterday rejected any conditions for the visit, part of last-ditch efforts to secure Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions as the United States prepares for possible war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction it says Baghdad has.

The trip, expected on Saturday, falls a few days before another key report by the inspectors to the UN Security Council on February 14, and may be their last report before the United States makes a final decision on whether to attack.

Iraq on Saturday said that the two stop inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, had agreed to go to Baghdad on Saturday. Spokesmen for both UN officials confirmed the visit.

Blix's spokesman said he assumed that the Iraqis had accepted the purpose of the meeting as laid out in the letter sent on Friday. "If they do not, we would expect to hear from them soon," spokesman Ewen Buchanan said, adding the trip appeared to be on.

The letter set down an agenda for the visit and urged some UN demands to be fulfilled before the trip, such as unrestricted flights by U-2 surveillance planes over Iraq and private interviews with Iraqi experts.

It said the inspectors expected Iraq to provide data missing from a declaration on its weapons that Baghdad made on December 7, such as the whereabouts of previously established stocks of the deadly chemical agent VX and anthrax.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said yesterday the visit was going ahead without conditions. "The visit is normal. There are no preconditions in such visits," he told reporters, without referring to the letter.

Blix is executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission or UNMOVIC, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic weapons. ElBaradei is director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for nuclear arms teams.

Yesterday, Hussam Mohammad Amin, head of the Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, repeated the earlier Iraqi position that his government could not guarantee the safety of U-2 planes when they entered US-British no-flight zones.

"How could we secure the safety of the U-2 airplane while such warfare is going on? It is so difficult," he asked.

On the private interviews, Amin said Iraqi authorities could not force anyone to submit to them. "We agreed... to encourage the scientists to go through private interviews but we can't force them," he said.

He said the talks would touch on Blix's January 27 report in which he sharply criticized Iraq for not fully accounting for its chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles.

Amin said the inspectors had visited 548 sites - including 84 which had never been inspected before - since they resumed inspections on November 27 after a four-year gap.

He denied US and British reports that Iraq had mobile units which produce biological agents, saying Iraq had purchased a portable lab from a British company to test imported foodstuffs.

Another lab did not meet specifications and would be returned, Amin said Blix in comments on Friday also said he had no knowledge of such laboratories.

Hunting for weapons In Iraq, UN weapons inspectors searched at least nine sites yesterday for banned weapons, some visiting a high explosives store and a dairy factory while others flew by helicopter to locations further from Baghdad.

As the US military pressed on with its buildup in the Gulf, defense officials in Washington gave details of a the first phase of an attack plan.

They said more than 3,000 guided bombs and missiles would hit military and leadership targets in the first 48 hours, softening the way for a two-pronged ground attack meant to topple President Saddam Hussein's government.

Nearly 700 Tomahawk cruise missiles alone would be launched by warships and heavy bombers in the opening two days in high-tech strikes 10 times more potent than those that opened the 1991 Gulf War, military and civilian officials said.

To minimize civilian casualties and immediately isolate Saddam from his military, the air plan, first reported by The New York Times yesterday, would rely far more on all-weather, satellite-guided bombs than was done in the Gulf War.

"If President George W. Bush makes a decision to go, Iraq's military and the civilian leadership will know it quickly in spades," said one US official. "It will also be clear that we are not going after the man on the street."

In Istanbul, Turkish engineering and artillery units set off for the southeastern border with Iraq, though the government has so far resisted pressure to let US troops use Turkish bases as staging posts for an invasion.

Washington and London insist that only the threat of imminent attack has a chance of forcing Saddam to come clean about hidden programs for weapons of mass destruction - which Iraq insists it does not have. Their hawkish position is controversial and Europe is deeply divided on whether a war against Iraq would be justified.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al Shara appealed to the European Union to help avert a unilateral US attack on Iraq and save the region from "more violence, more terrorism, more anarchy... more bloodshed."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said he will provide the Security Council next Wednesday with proof of Iraq's possession of banned weapons programs. Aziz says any such evidence will be "fabrications and lies."

On the diplomatic front, Arab League head Amr Moussa went to Lebanon to discuss bringing forward the date of the League's annual summit, now set for late March, because of the threat of a US-led attack on Iraq.