The chief weapons inspectors arrive in Baghdad today confident they can win concessions from the Iraqi government, but concerned they may be offered too little, too late to prevent a war.
On the eve of a potentially decisive encounter between the inspectors — Hans Blix of the UN, and Mohammed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — and Iraqi officials, there were unconfirmed reports that Baghdad was ready to allow overflights by American-piloted U-2 spy planes.
The reports followed the first private UN interview with an Iraqi scientist, Sinan Abdel-Hassan, on Thursday, which was seen as the first concrete Iraqi response to US secretary of state Colin Powell’s presentation of evidence at the UN on Wednesday.
Abdel-Hassan, a biologist, said later: ”I decided to volunteer for the interview because of my love for my country, my people and my leader. I don’t want the United States or Britain to have a pretext to attack Iraq.”
In Washington the White House downplayed the importance of the session, noting that Abdel-Hassan works for the Iraqi monitoring directorate which is responsible for dealing with inspectors.
”The only one they’re interviewing without a minder is a minder,” a representative said.
Three more scientists were interviewed yesterday, though the UN has a list of hundreds of Iraqi officials it wants to question. Blix said it appeared Iraq was making an effort but added: ”We want to see a lot more this weekend”.
Baradei also stressed the urgency of Iraqi action, saying he expected ”a drastic change” in Baghdad’s cooperation.
In Washington, President George Bush added to the pressure on Iraq by despatching air assault troops to the Gulf and calling on the UN security council to ”make up its mind soon” over military action, or the US would sidestep the UN and launch an attack with a coalition of allies.
”If the security council were to allow a dictator to lie and deceive, the security council will be weak,” Mr Bush said.
France’s ambassador to the US, Jean-David Levitte, claimed yesterday that 10 or 11 of the 15 members of the security council would prefer to extend inspections rather than use force.
Britain has started tentative discussions with other security council members on the possible wording of a new resolution, but is encountering resistance led by France, Russia and China.
A senior UN source said that perhaps the best cooperation Iraq could show would be to draw up legislation banning all programmes involving weapons of mass destruction.
”Baghdad has been obliged since September 1991 to pass this legislation and it still hasn’t even drawn it up,” the source said..
He added that if Saddam Hussein met with the inspectors ”it would no doubt help with scientists coming forward for [unsupervised] interviews”.
The sense of tension in the US rose yesterday, when the level of the terrorist threat was officially raised from yellow (elevated) to orange (high) in response to intelligence that an al-Qaeda attack was being planned against US targets, possibly using a chemical or biological weapon. – Guardian Unlimited Â