Inspectors to search for nuclear, other evidence

Any amounts of uranium oxide called "yellow cake" will be one of the first items the United Nations inspection team will look for in Iraq's declaration, due December 8, of its programmes to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Chief UN inspector Hans Blix, a former head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who set in place the 1991 post-Gulf War nuclear monitoring of Iraq, is aware of the recent British intelligence report on Baghdad's attempts to buy "yellow cake" from Niger and the analysis that "Iraq has no active civil nuclear programme or nuclear power plants and therefore has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium" unless it is eventually producing weapons grade materials.

Blix and his colleague, Mohammed El Baradei, the present IAEA head who is responsible for the nuclear inspections, believe an initial test for Saddam Hussain's adherence to the new Security Council resolution will be in the evidence he provides to support the expected claim he will make in the December 8 declaration: that he has destroyed the chemical and biological weapons he had in 1991 along with the facilities to produce nuclear ones as well as the means to develop or deliver any new ones.

The declaration must also list all facilities used to build delivery systems for prohibited weapons as well as commercial factories and storage sites for so-called dual-use materials and equipment that could be used to build such weapons.

Blix's team has for months been compiling a list of sites it expects Baghdad to declare, based on materials passed on from the previous inspectors, from governments such as the United States and Britain, and from their own analytic team that has been tracking Iraqi purchases for the past two years.

"Declarations by Iraq are not evidence," Blix said during a training session for inspectors. They have to be sustained by evidence from the inspection of sites and/or examination of documentary evidence presented or the interviews of people with relevant knowledge," he added.

But while the inspectors want evidence from Saddam to prove he does not have prohibited weapons and materials, they also want the United States, Britain and others to give them information, including intelligence data, that can be verified.

As Blix told his inspectors: "Intelligence may be very important, but if it is not sustained by evidence, it remains allegations. It is our job to try to verify plausible allegations."

In 1998, the previous UN inspection team estimated that Iraq could have produced two to four times the 8,500 litres they declared in 1991.

Iraq told previous inspectors that they never weaponised anthrax and destroyed all stocks in 1991. Later, the UN team discovered some spores in six Iraqi missile warheads.

Meanwhile, a story published last week stating that U.S. intelligence had reported Iraq had hidden 7,000 litres of anthrax has been denied by senior administration officials familiar with CIA analyses.

Blix has said previously that anthrax is one of many open issues that must be investigated since Iraq produced no records or protocols about the destruction of the biological agent.

He would expect the December 8 declaration would have some of those anthrax records. In addition, Dr. Rihab Taha, the British-educated scientist who headed the Iraqi biological weapons program and who is known among inspectors as "Dr Germ," is still working in Iraq and a prime candidate on inspectors' interview list.

Iraqi missile systems are also on Blix's list.

Discrepancies in previous Baghdad declarations "suggest" an undetermined number of Scud-type missiles may still exist, the report said.

A newer target for inspectors and required to be on the new declaration will be Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles which the CIA has said are capable of delivering biological and perhaps chemical warfare agents. If found to have that capability, they would be destroyed.