The UN will lay down an ultimatum to the Iraqi government on Saturday, calling for better cooperation and warning that the world is losing patience, the chief nuclear weapons inspector said yesterday.
Mohamed El Baradei said that despite splits in the security council over whether Iraq is in material breach of UN resolutions, there is an international consensus that Baghdad must be more forthcoming about its weapons programmes.
”There is an agreement that Iraq needs to cooperate more, that the international community is getting impatient and that inspectors should be able to provide positive reports soon,” El Baradei told Reuters news agency.
El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would pass on the demand for better cooperation to the regime when he arrives in Baghdad on Saturday with Hans Blix, the chief chemical and biological weapons inspector.
The sense of urgency in his remarks is striking as El Baradei has generally given more favourable accounts of Iraqi behaviour than Blix. Presenting his assessment to the security council last week he called for a few more months to continue his work in order ”to avoid a war”.
Blix, in his report, claimed there was still no sign that Iraq had ”come to a genuine acceptance” of the need to disarm. But the Swedish chairman of the UN monitoring verification and inspection commission (Unmovic) has insisted that his assessment did not represent a justification for war.
”I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of inspections,” Blix told the New York Times. Blix also challenged claims made by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, of Iraqi efforts to thwart inspections.
He said his inspectors had reported no evidence of Iraqi officials moving banned weapons material around Iraq or outside the country. He also said there was no evidence that government agents had been posing as Iraqi scientists, as President Bush claimed in his state of the union address.
UN officials also said yesterday they had no evidence of Iraqi spying on Unmovic or the IAEA. But Mr Blix said he had decided not to ask directly for more time for inspections, as he not seen a ”change of attitude on the part of Iraq” towards providing a better account of what happened to its stockpiles of banned weapons.
Powell is to present a portfolio of US evidence against Iraq in a specially convened meeting of the security council tomorrow. He is also to present evidence of longstanding links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, based on the testimony of defectors and captured members of al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, the government yesterday published plans for mass decontamination after a theoretical terrorist strike with chemical weapons or a nuclear ”dirty bomb”.
The document says: ”It is likely that a terrorist attack would involve a specific target such as a VIP, critical or iconic location, or high-profile event.
”The amount of damage resulting from a major incident or series of incidents could far exceed the levels of damage produced in previous disasters.” – Guardian Unlimited Â