Mattress and slipper factories among sites Blix weapons team insists on examining By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad 20 November 2002

The dinner between one of Saddam Hussein's closest aides and Hans Blix was meant to smooth the thorny path for the renewed United Nations weapons inspections.

But the Iraqis were bemused to find sponge mattress-es and slippers on the menu. Factories producing such items were just two of the examples of the array of sites the UN chief weapons inspector said his team intended to search in its efforts to discover whether Saddam Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction.

Such is the scale of information the UN is demanding, Iraqi officials told Mr Blix's team they may have difficulties meeting the 8 December deadline by which they must submit a detailed report.

Mr Blix said yesterday the Iraqis had assured him they would do "everything humanly possible" to comply with the new UN resolution on its supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis were reminded that a failure to meet the deadline would, almost certainly, be seen by the United States as a "material breach" of the resolution and clear the way for an attack. "That seemed to concentrate their minds," said a diplomatic source.

The meal, hosted by Amir al-Sadi at the Finjan restaurant for Mr Blix and Mohamed al-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Authority, took place on Monday evening.

It followed a two-hour meeting between the UN team and Iraqi officials at the weapon monitors reopened headquarters at the Canal Hotel, Baghdad.

The Iraqis were told the UN operation would be much more exhausting, intrusive and comprehensive than anything in the past, and no place, or person, could expect dispensation

The Iraqis, led by General Husan Amin, asked for "further clarification" of the terms of the US-sponsored UN resolution.

According to diplomatic sources the Iraqis were "staggered" by the range of what the UN proposes to explore in seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as facilities that can be used for civil or military needs.

The UN's chief weapons inspector said it was up to Saddam Hussein's regime to prove his claims that it does not possess any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

The new UN team of inspectors has been told by the Iraqis that they have not been seeking material to build a nuclear bomb. Mr Blix said the onus of proving that lay with Baghdad. Mr Blix was meeting other Iraqi ministers yesterday and will fly back to New York to give his initial impressions to the UN before the bulk of inspectors arrive in Baghdad on 25 November.

Those inspectors returning to their sealed offices in the Canal Hotel on Monday found unmade beds, and cases that were hastily abandoned when they left in December 1998, just before American and British war planes unleashed attacks on Iraq. They also found four years of dust.

Attempts to kick-start the inspections were complicated yesterday by what Iraqis, publicly, and UN officials, privately, say are attempts by the Bush administration to undermine the mission on the outset.

In Washington, the White House spokesman Scott McClennan claimed Baghdad was already in breach of the new resolution by firing on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones over the country. UN officials were perturbed by criticism of Mr Blix, a 74-year-old former Swedish foreign minister, by right-wingers in America. The focus on firing in the no-fly zones – a regular event since they were established after the Gulf War – was seized upon by the Iraqi government as an attempt by the Bush administration to scupper the UN mission.

An Iraqi Foreign Ministry official said: "This shows it is the Americans who are against the UN inspections, not us. They are trying to find pretexts to stop the mission and bomb us."

Al-Iraq, a government newspaper, declared: "The US wants to attack Iraq under the excuse of the banned weapons and their alleged danger." Asked about the criticism of Mr Blix by figures in Washington, Mark Gwozdecky, for the UN team, remarked: "Those who make these attacks don't seem to understand the damage they are doing to the international attempts to stop proliferation, not just in Iraq, but elsewhere. It is inspectors who find hidden weapons, not bombs. Inspectors have destroyed more weapons here than the bombs have."

The UN mission stressed the process of inspection was a long-term one and preliminary findings, or lack of them, should not be an excuse to launch a military attack on Iraq.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2002