Global Policy Forum

By Edith M. Lederer

U.N. weapons inspectors have not found any "smoking guns" in Iraq during their search for weapons of mass destruction, the chief U.N. weapons inspector said Thursday. Hans Blix spoke to reporters at the United Nations before he and his counterpart Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, went in to brief the Security Council on their assessments of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration.

"We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns," Blix said before the Security Council meeting, in which he and ElBaradei were likely to provide an update on the inspections process. Asked whether inspectors were getting significant intelligence from the United States, Blix said: "Well, we are getting intelligence from several sources and I will not go into the operative part of that, but it's clear that this will be helpful in the future to us." "We have gone to, I think, about 125 sites already, and some of them were not visited before, and there will be more. And as more intelligence comes in, there will be more sites visited. I'm confident that we will get more intelligence."

Secretary of State Colin Powell told The Washington Post for Thursday's editions that in the past few days, the United States has begun giving inspectors "significant intelligence" that has enabled them to become "more aggressive and to be more comprehensive in the work they're doing." But Washington is holding back some information to see if inspectors "are able to handle it and exploit it. ... It is not a matter of opening up every door we have," Powell said. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said his government wants the council to adopt a resolution that requests all countries to provide information on Iraq's "prohibited programs" and recommend sites to be visited and Iraqis to be interviewed. The United States has promised to share information with inspectors, as long as U.S. intelligence sources aren't compromised. "We have and will continue to provide information to the inspectors," a U.S. official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Blix has said his inspectors need intelligence from other nations because Iraq's weapons declaration leaves so many unanswered questions that it's impossible to verify its claim of having no weapons of mass destruction.

On Thursday, Blix reiterated that Iraq's weapons declaration was incomplete. "We think that the declaration failed to answer a great many questions." ElBaradei said Monday that after two months of inspections it was still too early to determine whether Saddam Hussein's regime was trying to develop nuclear weapons. "We are not certain of Iraq's (nuclear) capability," he said. Blix has called on Iraq to answer outstanding questions in the declaration on Iraq's chemical, biological and missile programs, which is required under Resolution 1441, adopted Nov. 8. "Iraq may have more to say. I hope so," Blix said.

A senior Iraqi official denied on Thursday that the arms declaration was incomplete, as inspectors have repeatedly said. "People who claim there were gaps, I could tell you right away they have not read it," Amir al-Saadi, Saddam's science adviser, said.

The purpose of Thursday's Security Council meeting was to give council members an assessment of Iraq's arms declaration and update them about "our increasing capability in country, including the use of helicopters, the opening of a temporary regional monitoring center in Mosul and other steps to make us more effective," Blix's spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said. Blix is to give the council a formal report on the inspections on Jan. 27.

After his last briefing to the council on Dec. 19, Blix urged the United States and Britain to hand over any evidence they have about Iraq's secret weapons programs so U.N. inspectors can check it. Britain opened a channel weeks ago to provide the inspectors with information and "they are getting all that we can usefully give," a British official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Blix said the United States and Britain have given briefings to inspectors on what they think the Iraqis have, but what inspectors really want to know is where weapons-related material is stored.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that weapons inspectors must be given the time and space to do their job and that Jan. 27 was not a deadline for conflict. "We are in the middle of a process. The U.N. inspectors have just, at the beginning of the year, got their full complement of inspectors there," Blair told government ministers in London, according to his official spokesman, who briefed reporters on the morning Cabinet meeting.

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