Inspectors press U.S. on asylum for scientists

The UN's chief weapons inspectors are pressing the United States to guarantee that any Iraqi scientist or government official - and their entire families if the want it, will be granted political asylum, according to U.S. and UN officials.

The Bush administration, which has been urging the inspectors to conduct such interviews, has so far declined to offer blanket assurances of asylum to all Iraqis questioned by the inspectors, the officials said.

Senior U.S. officials have been engaged in intensive discussions with UN inspectors this month to try to reach a compromise that would ensure that a select number of key Iraqi scientists and their families would receive safe haven if they cooperate. John S. Wolf, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, and John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, have met several times with Hans Blix, Mohammed El Baradei and other UN officials over the past two weeks to work out procedures for the interviews.

The talks were followed by a U.S. campaign to persuade the inspectors to quicken the pace of interviews in an effort to elicit fresh evidence of hidden Iraqi weapons and test Baghdad's cooperation. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Thursday that the UN inspectors "should give high priority to conducting interviews with scientists and other witnesses outside of Iraq, where they can speak freely.''

Blix, the executive chairman of the UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic), and El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),have expressed an increased willingness this week to consider taking Iraqi officials abroad if their safety can be assured. They have also ordered Iraq to provide them before the end of the month with a list of Iraqi scientists and other officials associated with its current and past weapons programmes.

Blix, who has resisted U.S. pressure to spirit Iraqi officials out of the country, saying he did not want to run a "defection'' agency, told the Security Council Thursday that such interviews with willing Iraqi specialists are "an option.'' El Baradei went further, confirming that "we will do it'' if there are arrangements in place to guarantee the protection of the Iraqis and their families. "We need to ensure their safety both in terms of making sure that they either have asylum abroad or if they decide to come back to Iraq they (will be) safe,'' he said in an interview. El Baradei said he would conduct the first round of private interviews with Iraqi specialists inside Iraq before selecting a smaller group to be interviewed outside the country. "We need to identify the people who have the key information ... to make sure that they are willing to come out of Iraq voluntarily. We are not going to force them.''

UN officials say they are concerned that the United States, or other governments, may refuse asylum requests from Iraqis who have been taken out of the country but failed to supply valuable information on Iraq's secret weapons programme. "What if this guy says 'I want asylum in the U.S. and Washington say "no" because he just repeated the official line,'' said one U.N. inspection official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Then we are stuck in the middle. Are we going to have to send him and his family back to Iraq knowing they most probably are going to be killed or harmed?"

The United States is finalising arrangements to deliver a list of the names of knowledgeable Iraqi scientists that it wants the inspectors to question. An administration official said Washington is also "working meticulously" with the United Nations to resolve the asylum issue. "We haven't taken a decision yet on whether we would take in these people," the official said. "There are discussions going on with the United Nations as well as with other countries, but nothing has been decided."

UN and European officials said that they expect the United States to shoulder the burden of taking in Iraqi asylum-seekers. "There is one country pushing this, so that one country will have to think about what it's willing to do,'' said a European diplomat. "It shouldn't be a big deal for the United States on its own to absorb them. It's not a major burden in terms of immigration.''

The asylum issue is just one of several practical concerns that are complicating Washington's efforts to hasten the pace of interviews with Iraqi officials. Blix and El Baradei are trying to establish security arrangements for interviews with Iraqi experts inside Iraq.

Officials familiar with the planning said that Blix and El Baradei also have been consulting the United States about the prospects of persuading a country near Iraq to provide a site for interviews, housing and security as well as temporary visas for interview subjects and their families. The most likely sites are Cyprus, where UN inspectors already have a full-time office and operate a daily flight between Larnaca and Baghdad, Jordan or Turkey.

They wonder if they conduct an interview in Cyprus, will Cyprus allow them to have 42 visas to accommodate the interviewee's extended family and whether the United States was prepared to give asylum to individual scientists and extended family members U.S. and UN officials said that none of these countries has received formal requests to provide a location for interviews.
@Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service