Iraq says inspections show US claims "baseless"
( 2003-01-03 10:41 ) (7 )

A senior Iraqi official said on Thursday five weeks of intrusive UN weapons inspections had proved that US allegations that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction were baseless.

General Hussam Mohammad Amin said UN inspectors had visited 230 sites since they returned to the country on November 27 and had found nothing incriminating.

"All those activities prove that the Iraqi declarations are credible and the American allegations are baseless. They are lying for political reasons," he told a news conference.

"The inspectors did not find any prohibited activities or prohibited items in those 230 sites that have been visited till now," Amin, the chief Iraqi official liaising with UN inspectors, said.

He said the inspectors were intrusive because they went beyond searching for banned weapons by looking at documents, requesting meetings with staff and inspecting the commercial activities of the sites.

Amin confirmed that chief UN inspector Hans Blix would visit Baghdad in the third week of January, before he reports back to the Security Council on January 27.

He said the visit was "a positive indication on the road to removing any difficulties and implementing Security Council resolutions".

He said the inspections showed clearly that Iraq had not exploited the four year absence of inspectors to develop weapons of mass destruction as claimed by the United States and Britain.

He said most visited sites had been cited by Washington and London as facilities where Iraq was working on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Amin said the inspectors were at times too aggressive, echoing complaints by heads of some inspected facilities about the behaviour of the experts. One chief of a plant accused them this week of behaving like gangsters.

Amin said the inspectors were due to launch an aerial inspection on Wednesday using helicopters but the mission was postponed due to technical problems.

He said the inspectors and Iraqi monitors were setting up a base in the northern town of Mosul.