Global Policy Forum

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Iraq said today it would comply with demands for greater cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, promising to encourage its scientists to speak privately with inspectors, to comb the country for more undeclared chemical munitions and to hand over additional documents to augment the arms declaration it issued last month.

Iraqi officials made the commitments during a lengthy meeting here with the U.N.'s two top weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who are scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated report to the U.N. Security Council in one week. Blix, who had warned the Iraqis in meetings on Sunday that substantial portions of his report were going to be negative, said the fulfillment of today's pledges would result in a more upbeat assessment.

"They are positive steps," Blix said in a brief interview before departing Baghdad. He refused, however, to say Iraq had met his call for "proactive cooperation," saying he plans to defer judgment until inspectors receive more documents and are able to conduct confidential interviews.

Iraq's stance on interviews and documents had been regarded by the inspectors and many members of the Security Council as a key test of compliance with council resolutions mandating the nation's disarmament. Diplomats here said today's promise almost certainly will be seized upon by European nations, particularly council members France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, to reinforce their arguments to hold off on military action against Iraq, potentially complicating efforts by the Bush administration, which is deploying tens of thousands of additional troops to the Persian Gulf, to forge an international consensus for an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

"We need to come to an effective and credible inspection process," Blix said at a news conference. "We have come a long way on that, but there have been hitches on it and some of these hitches have been solved today. I think the whole world would prefer to have disarmament-a credible disarmament-of Iraq through inspections, and the better inspections we have, the more credible is this alternative."

The Iraqi government said it would elaborate on its promises to the United Nations at a news conference on Monday night. As he left a meeting with Blix and ElBaradei this morning, Hussein's top science adviser, Amir Saadi, called the agreement "very constructive and positive."

The issue of interviewing weapons scientists has emerged as a key point of controversy between Iraq and the inspectors. The inspectors want to be able to interview Iraqi scientists in private, away from government minders who, the inspectors fear, might intimidate the scientists from speaking freely. Although Iraqi officials had said the country's scientists were free to choose how they want to be questioned, U.N. officials maintained the Iraqi government did not do enough to encourage the scientists to talk and instead effectively dissuaded them from consenting to private interviews.

Over the past few days, the inspectors had asked the government to arrange private interviews with six scientists, but all said they would not speak without Iraqi officials present.

A statement jointly issued by the Iraqi government and the United Nations said "persons asked for interviews in private will be encouraged to accept this."

Blix said the inspectors plan to request several interviews over the next few days. U.N. officials said they plan to conduct the interviews at their offices in Baghdad if the scientists agree.

The Bush administration wants the inspectors to go even further and insist that key scientists and their families be removed from Iraq, arguing that debriefing sessions in another country would allow them to provide more candid disclosures about the country's alleged efforts to develop nuclear, chemical and biological arms.

There was no agreement on that issue today. U.N. officials said Blix first wants to hold private interviews in Baghdad before asking scientists to leave the country for questioning.

Blix and ElBaradei said the Iraqis had agreed to respond to questions regarding a 12,000-page declaration submitted Dec. 8 reporting on Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs. Although Iraq said the documents will complete and accurate, the U.N. inspectors and the U.S. government have both criticized the declaration as inadequate.

Iraqi officials also said they would mount a comprehensive search for old chemical warheads that fit atop small rockets. On Thursday, inspectors visiting an army munitions depot southwest of Baghdad discovered a cache of a dozen empty chemical warheads that were not listed in the declaration. On Sunday, Iraqi officials told Blix they had located four more similar warheads at another ammunition storage area.

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