Global Policy Forum

By David Usborne

Hans Blix, the chairman of the new UN commission for inspecting arms in Iraq, has warned that, even as he prepares to send inspectors back into the country, Baghdad may block him because of its fury over sanctions and the bombing of its territory by Britain and America.

Mr Blix, who was appointed earlier this year to run the new body, called Unmovic, voiced his concerns to The Independent as he completes recruitment of a new team of inspectors. He expects to be ready to deploy them - if the UN gets the co-operation of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein - towards the end of August.

About 40 of the new inspectors, experts in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, will come to New York next month for four weeks of training. To answer Iraqi complaints that the predecessor arms body, Unscom, adopted a "cowboy" approach to its work, the inspectors will receive training on issues such as Iraqi culture and religion.

While he claims to be "optimistic" that Iraqi resistance to the resumption of UN inspections will be overcome, Mr Blix concedes that there are issues beyond his control that mean Baghdad may never let in the new inspectors. They include the near daily bombing of targets in the north and south of Iraq.

"Most of those things fall outside my remit, like when they talk about stopping of bombing, when they talk about the no-fly zone and when they talk about stopping of sanctions," said Mr Blix, a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "These are things I can do nothing about."

It has already been 18 months since the old Unscom folded and inspections in Iraq ceased, after the launch by the US and Britain of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998. Mr Blix conceded that while satellite surveillance has never stopped, he has no way of knowing what Iraq may have done to rebuild its arsenals in that time. "Satellites don't see through roofs," he noted.

Mr Blix occupies a corner room in a suite of offices on the 31st floor of UN headquarters that used to be the buzzing command centre of Unscom. With new plaques identifying it as the home today of Unmovic - the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission - the offices, that spread also to the floor below, are half empty. Only a small staff remains, preparing for next month's training courses.

The place is filled, meanwhile, with artefacts testifying to the death of Unscom, the agency that was reviled by Iraq. There is a clumsy-looking light table, for instance, for studying aerial surveillance photographs, idle since its two operators were fired over six months ago.

Stacked in corridors and against the walls of the so-called bunker, a room where advisers would gather during each of Unscom's many crises, are scores of tin and wooden crates that inspectors seized from a farm just outside Baghdad in 1995. Most remain stuffed with the documents, diagrams and computer diskettes that proved invaluable in demonstrating the extent of Iraq's weapons programmes.

In theory, it will not be long before the place is buzzing again. However, critics, including the former chairman of Unscom, Richard Butler, already charge that Unmovic will never get off the ground. And even if Saddam Hussein does let them in, they add, the new body will be toothless.

Mr Blix bases his optimism on the content of Resolution 1284, which created Unmovic last December. Crucially, it promises a suspension of economic sanctions, in place since 1991, if Iraq demonstrates cooperation "in all respects" with the inspectors. Previously, those sanctions were to remain in place until the complete elimination of all weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq had been proven.

"So that is a totally new ballgame and I hope it is a ballgame that the Iraqis will play," Mr Blix said. "My assessment is that they would stand to gain from this." He takes seriously the earlier complaints by Baghdad about some of Unscom's practices.

His new inspectors, he says, "should know about the shrines in Iraq because many of them were not knowledgeable about this in the past. There was a perception that the inspectors came from outer space before and they perhaps did not always appreciate that a mosque was a mosque - that sort of thing." But he denied the notion that Unmovic will be a pale and ineffectual stepchild of Unscom.

"We are young and kicking. There is nothing in the resolution to say that we will have less power than our predecessor body. There is no reduction of power," he said.

"We shall not have cosy relations with the Iraqis but they should be correct," he added. "We shall not undertake activities that are intended to be harassing or humiliating or provocative".