The first team of UN inspectors landed in Baghdad yesterday to resume their search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after a four-year interruption.
A C-130 transport plane touched down at Saddam International Airport carrying six nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency and 11 members of the Unmovic team, together with an array of high-technology sensors, computers and other equipment.
”We come here with, let’s say, hope that things will go well this time, and we will get what is required of Iraq,” said Melissa Fleming, an IAEA representative who flew in with the inspectors.
”We’re aware that we will be watched … I think the Iraqis are also aware that the entire world is watching.”
Despite widespread suspicion that Washington wants the inspection mission to fail, Mohammed el-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, urged Iraq to help them succeed.
”I believe that the war is not imminent or inevitable, and it can be avoided through cooperation with inspectors. Inspections are Iraq’s only opportunity to avoid war,” he told reporters after meeting President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
If Iraq does not ensure that the inspections come to a successful conclusion, ”Iraq knows that there will be serious consequences not only on Iraq but the entire region”, he said.
Preparations for the first inspection — due tomorrow morning — are taking place in great secrecy, so that Iraq will have no advance warning of the site to be inspected.
But it is likely that on their first mission, the team will revisit a site previously inspected during the 1990s. Among other things, they may check on cameras and other monitoring equipment left behind by earlier inspectors.
Later, they will move on to previously uninspected sites or newly-suspected hiding places identified by US and other intelligence agencies.
The roster of UN inspectors includes some 300 chemists, biologists, missile and ordnance experts and other specialists, plus a few dozen engineers and physicists. Between 80 and 100 will be working in Iraq at any one time.
An additional 35 inspectors are expected in Baghdad on December 8 — the deadline by which Iraq, under the recent security council resolution, must provide details of all its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes.
Directing a note of caution towards Washington, Fleming warned that inspections, not warfare, were the only way of discovering the truth about Iraq’s weaponry.
”Bombs don’t find weapons of mass destruction. One way or another you have to have inspections,” she said, as the team prepared to leave their base in Cyprus for Iraq.
”Without inspections, you can suspect anything,” she said. ”Part of our quest now is to find out whether Iraq has revived its nuclear programme.
”All the inspectors naturally feel a tremendous weight of responsibility and a certain nervousness. This is the most important job they’ll probably ever do.”
Demetrius Perricos, Unmovic’s operations director, said he expected the search to ”go smoothly — at least at first”.
”Inspections are the safety valve in the pressure cooker,” he said. ”They are in Iraq’s interests.”
While unfettered access to all sites — not least presidential compounds — was of paramount importance, he said, so was access to documentation. ”In many ways the documents are going to be even more important and useful.” – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001