UN team lands in Baghdad for inspections

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The first team of U.N. inspectors landed in Iraq on Monday to resume the hunt for chemical, biological or nuclear arms programs, a search whose outcome could help determine the future of peace in the Middle East.\nA white C-130 transport plane, emblazoned with a simple "UN," touched down at Saddam International Airport carrying 17 international arms monitors and their cargo of high-tech sensors, computers and other gear. They had assembled earlier at a U.N. rear base on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.\nThe team comprised six nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and 11 inspectors from the New York-based U.N. commission charged with searching for other weapons of mass destruction. Meetings were scheduled Monday night with liaisons from President Saddam Hussein's government.\nAfter a four-year suspension, the crucial new round of surprise inspections will begin Wednesday, when they will likely revisit an unidentified Iraqi site previously inspected in the 1990s. Among other things, they may check on cameras and other monitoring equipment left behind by earlier inspectors.\nLater, the inspectors will branch out to new or rebuilt sites -- for example, suspected storage places for chemical weapons U.S. intelligence alleges are still held by Iraq.\n"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, a nuclear agency spokeswoman who flew in with the inspectors.\n"We're aware that we will be watched, every move. I think the Iraqis are also aware that the entire world is watching."\nHiro Ueki, Baghdad spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, said the expert teams are empowered by the United Nations to inspect any site at any time, and secrecy in planning is paramount.\n"If you were the head coach of an American football team, I don't think you'd reveal your strategy," Ueki said.\nFleming said some 35 additional inspectors will arrive Dec. 8.\nThe roster of U.N. inspectors includes some 300 chemists, biologists, missile and ordnance experts and other specialists of UNMOVIC, and a few dozen engineers and physicists of the U.N. nuclear agency. Between 80 and 100 will be working in Iraq at any one time.\nAs inspectors arrived, British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Saddam against denying he has any weapons of mass destruction in the report Iraq must file to the United Nations by Dec. 8.\n"We have no doubt he does have weapons of mass destruction. So let's wait and see what he actually says," Blair told reporters in London. "Should it be found that that declaration was dishonest then that most certainly would be a material breach."\nIn Paris, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and French President Jacques Chirac also urged Iraq to cooperate fully with the inspectors.\nOn the eve of the inspectors' arrival, the Iraqi government released a letter from Foreign Minister Naji Sabri to Annan protesting that parts of the U.N. resolution mandating the inspection mission could give Washington a pretext for attacking his country.\nSabri complained in particular that the resolution could turn "inaccurate statements (among) thousands of pages" of mandatory Iraqi reports into a supposed justification for military action.\n"There is premeditation to target Iraq, whatever the pretext," the foreign minister wrote.\nThe Iraqi complaints were not expected to interfere with resumption of the inspections. Iraq had accepted the resolution in a Nov. 13 letter from Sabri to Annan.\nIn seven years' work ending in 1998, U.N. expert teams destroyed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons and longer-range missiles forbidden to Iraq by U.N. resolutions after the Gulf War, in which an Iraqi invasion force was driven from Kuwait. The inspectors also dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program before it could build a bomb.\nThe inspections were suspended amid disputes over U.N. access to Iraqi sites and Iraqi complaints of American spying via the U.N. operation.\nA new focus on Iraq by the Bush administration led to adoption of Resolution 1441 and the dispatch of inspectors back to Iraq with greater powers of unrestricted access. Washington alleges that Iraq retains prohibited weapons and may be producing others.\nThe Security Council resolution, adopted unanimously Nov. 7, demands that the Iraqis give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or face "serious consequences." The Bush administration threatens an invasion to enforce Iraqi disarmament, with or without U.N. sanction. Other governments say a decision to wage war on Iraq can be made only by the Security Council.\nThe resolution requires Iraq to account for its weapons programs, as well of chemical, biological and nuclear programs it claims are peaceful. Any "false statements or omissions" in that declaration could contribute to a finding that it had committed a "material breach" of the resolution, a finding that might lead to military action.\nSabri's letter, dated Saturday and released Sunday, called this key passage is unjust, "because it considers the giving of inaccurate statements -- taking into consideration that there are thousands of pages to be presented in those statements -- is a material breach."\nSabri wrote that the aim was clear: "to provide pretexts ... to be used in aggressive acts against Iraq."\nAfter talks with the Iraqis last week, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said they had expressed "particular concern" about what was expected of them in reporting on their chemical industry, a complex area in which many toxic products can be diverted to military use.\nIn an editorial Monday, the newspaper al-Thawra, organ of the ruling Baath Party, said Sabri's letter "reveals how bad, unjust and booby-trapped this resolution is."\nIf the inspectors eventually certify that Iraq has cooperated fully with their disarmament work, U.N. resolutions call for the lifting of international economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.