by Barbara Crossette
The New York Times
December 19, 1997

The Security Council resumed discussion day on Iraq's refusal to open all sites requested by United Nations arms inspectors, but there was no indication that Council members are prepared to take any action to end the standoff. The Council heard a report from Richard Butler, head of the special commission charged with disarming raq, who returned on Wednesday from talks in Baghdad. Mr. Butler's report was not encouraging, diploats said. "We have some steps backwards, some retrenchments here," Bill ichardson, the United States representative, said after the meeting. 'On the issue of disclosure of weapons, we have retrenchment. On the issue of sensitive sites and presidenial sites, we have retrenchment - steps backward."

He added that the United States should press for a statement from the Council in the next few days. During the talks in Baghdad, led for Iraq by Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the Iraqis turned down 11 suggestions by Mr. Butler on a compromise that would allow inspecion of areas the Iraqis call presidenial sites. Many of these sites, though not all of them, are palaces belonging to President Saddam Hussein. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Aziz ridiculed American preoccupation with the palaces, sayng the sites had been imbued with undue mystery. Nevertheless, he told Mr. Butler that United Nations inspectors would never have access to them.

Today Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq's delegate to the United Nations, said Iraq always considered the presidential areas exempt from inspection. "Presidential sites are not subject for inspection under any of the provisions of the Security Council resolutions," he said. Iraq, which has been under an international embargo since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, must be declared free of all weapons of mass destruction before the sanctions can be lifted.