Iraq criticizes palace inspection

AL-MUTHANNA STATE ESTABLISHMENT, Iraq -- U.N. monitors Wednesday visited sites associated with mass destruction weapons Baghdad insists it no longer holds. Iraq, meanwhile, criticized the first inspection of a presidential palace, saying it was carried out under U.S. pressure to try to provoke a confrontation.\nIn Baghdad, a senior Iraqi official said Iraq will hand over its report on chemical, biological and nuclear programs on Saturday, a day ahead of the U.N. deadline. The official, Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, said the report will not admit to any proscribed weaponry "because, really, we have no weapons of mass destruction."\nPresident Bush, meanwhile, dismissed reports that Iraqi weapons inspections are going well. "We've been at this five days -- this is after 11 years of deceit and defiance," Bush told reporters in a brief White House exchange. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned in Slovenia that it would be "wise" for the Iraqis admit that they still have weapons of mass destruction.\nU.S. war planes bombed an Iraqi air defense site in the northern "no-fly" zone about 15 miles from the city of Mosul, U.S. officials said. The attack came after the Iraqis fired on U.S. jets patrolling the area, the officials said.\nAmong the two sites visited Wednesday was the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, where inspectors checked on new construction and other changes since their last visit in 1998, according to Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. nuclear control agency in Vienna, Austria.\nThe other site at al-Muthanna, located in the desert about 45 miles northwest of Baghdad, was formerly associated with Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs.\nAl-Tuwaitha, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, has long been an issue of international concern. The site was bombed by Israeli warplanes in 1981 and again by the Americans in the Gulf War 10 years later. Recent satellite photos have spotted new construction.\nIn the late 1990s, U.N. inspectors demolished the al-Muthanna State Establishment after finding it had been key to Iraq's production of some of the deadliest chemical weapons known: mustard gas, tabun, sarin and VX nerve agent.\nThe desert center operated under the name of Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production, but the Iraqis finally admitted to the U.N. monitors that al-Muthanna produced 4,000 tons of chemical warfare agent per year.\nAl-Muthanna also became instrumental in the development of biological agents, apparently including anthrax.\nWednesday's searches came at the end of the first week of renewed inspections under a U.N. Security Council mandate for Iraq to shut down any continuing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.\nThe Iraqis have until Sunday to submit a report outlining their chemical, biological and nuclear programs, including those for peaceful purposes. Gen. Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer, said the report will be submitted Saturday but will not include any admission of banned armaments "because, really, we have no weapons of mass destruction."\nBoth the United States and Britain maintain that's not true and have threatened to disarm the Iraqis by force if they do not surrender proscribed weapons. U.S. officials said they will check the Iraqi claims against their own intelligence to determine if the report is accurate.\nThe inspectors are operating under a new U.N. resolution which gives inspectors the power to go anywhere at anytime in search of banned weapons. To reinforce that, the inspectors paid a visit Tuesday to one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces, Al-Sajoud.\nAmin criticized the palace inspection, saying it was performed under U.S. and Israeli pressure to goad Iraq into a confrontation. He said that if the inspectors had expected to find banned weapons, they would have worn protective gear but did not.\n"We consider the entry of the presidential sites as unjustified and really unnecessary," Amin said, adding that Iraq would not try to bar inspectors nevertheless.\nDisputes over access to palaces and other sensitive sites and over allegations of U.S. spies on the U.N. team led to the collapse of the previous inspection mission in 1998.\nWhen the inspectors arrived Wednesday at the remote front gate of al-Muthanna, they were admitted quickly to what appeared to be a vast desert installation covering what seemed to be several square miles. Through the morning fog, the ruins of scattered buildings could be seen from the outer gate.\nAfter the 1991 war, the facility's equipment and material were destroyed under the supervision of U.N. inspectors in the late 1990s.\nThe disarmament of al-Muthanna was a major achievement of the U.N. inspectorate. A recent Iraqi report said the U.N. teams at al-Muthanna had destroyed 38,500 artillery shells and other chemical-filled weapons, almost 520,000 gallons of liquid material, 150 pieces of equipment used to make chemical weapons, and four production facilities.\nInspectors left al-Muthanna without speaking to journalists waiting at the gate. However, an Iraqi liaison officer, Raad Manhal, said the arms experts had searched for signs of resumed production at the site.\n"There were looking for any change, and they found no change," Manhal said.\nSo far, the inspectors have reported the Iraqis to be cooperative. In New York on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described Iraq's co-operation as good, but he cautioned "this is only the beginning."\nAnnan's comments appeared at odds with that of Bush, who said Monday that early signs from Baghdad "are not encouraging." The president held to that view in his comments Wednesday.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell told reporters while en route to Colombia that the inspection process is "off to a pretty good start" and noted the inspectors have been allowed to visit sites thus far without Iraqi interference.\n"I'm not prepared to say the inspections are working," Powell said. "They're not up to strength and they're not up to speed yet."\nIn the 1990s, inspectors eliminated tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them, dismantled Iraq's effort to build nuclear bombs, and destroyed scores of longer-range Iraqi missiles. The inspectors reported that they suspected they had not found all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.\nIraq denied Kuwaiti claims that one of its boats had fired on Kuwaiti coast guard vessels in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. Kuwait said the Iraqi vessel fled after the Kuwaitis returned fire.\nThe Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement that no such incident occurred.