Global Policy Forum

By Suzanne Goldenberg, Nick Paton Walsh, and Ewen MacAskill

United Nations inspectors produced their most dramatic discovery in the hunt for Saddam Hussein's arsenals of banned weapons yesterday, finding empty warheads designed to carry chemical weapons in a complex of military bunkers.

The find - only 11 days before the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is to report to the security council on the progress of the weapons hunt - could potentially figure in Washington's arguments that President Saddam has no intention of disarming and must therefore face military attack.

A UN spokesman in Baghdad said the warheads were uncovered during a visit to the Ukhaider ammunition storage area, 75 miles south of Baghdad. He said an inspection team had gone there to inspect a large group of bunkers constructed in the late 1990s.

"During the course of their inspection, the team discovered 11 empty 122mm chemical warheads and one warhead that requires further evaluation," the spokesman, Hiro Ueki, said. "The warheads were in excellent condition and were similar to ones imported by Iraq during the late 1980s."

UN officials said it did not immediately appear that the munitions were accounted for in Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its arsenal last December 8, an omission that could represent a breach of security council resolutions.

However, Iraq said the stocks were old weapons, and had been mentioned in its declaration last month. Lt Gen Hossam Mohammed Amin, the main Iraqi dealing with the inspectors, said he was astonished by "all the fuss made about the discovery", adding that it was a storm in a teacup.

The warheads, which fit Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, have a range of just over four miles. V The first reaction from Washington was to calm speculation that the find would provide the trigger for war, and to deny that the warheads were "a smoking gun".

"A smoking gun would be if you found a big stockpile with chemicals," an official said.

Despite the US disclaimers, the find comes at a time when the arms inspectors are intensifying their searches ahead of the January 27 deadline.

The inspectors set rigorous new standards of intrusion on Iraqi scientists yesterday, searching private residences, and using an Iraqi scientist as a guide in a search of a suspect field outside Baghdad.

Mr Ueki said the inspectors who uncovered the chemical warheads used portable x-ray equipment for a preliminary analysis of one of the warheads and collected samples for chemical testing.

The location of yesterday's find was known to UN inspectors working in Iraq during the 1990s, said Scott Ritter, a former weapons inspector who has visited the site.

The site was bombed during Desert Storm in 1991 and was visited frequently by UN inspectors until 1998, when the team left Iraq. Veterans of those inspections said warheads discovered in 1997 were equipped with mustard gas. However, the rockets can be adapted to other warheads such as highly flammable phosphorus warheads.

The inspectors also raided the homes of two Iraqi experts, a nuclear scientist and a physicist at a firm involved in laser development and military projects. The searches, which lasted six hours, brought protests from the two scientists, Faleh Hassan and Shaker al-Jabouri.

"They did not leave any piece in the house unturned," Mr Jabouri complained. The day's events underlined the pressures now building on Dr Blix - and in turn President Saddam - to produce a full pic ture of Iraq's weapons capabilities before the crucial UN meeting on January 27.

Last night the US State Department said that UN inspections should not go on indefinitely, given Iraq's refusal to provide full disclosure. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "There's no point in continuing forever if Iraq is not cooperating,"

Mr Blix is due to arrive in Baghdad tomorrow to demand answers from Iraq on its banned weapons. He said yesterday his patience was running out, and that Iraq had fallen short in its assistance to his inspectors.

"Iraq must do more to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors if it wanted to avoid war," he said after a meeting with EU officials in Brussels. "They need to become more pro-active."

The message was put in even starker language by the head of the UN's nuclear monitoring body, Dr Mohammed ElBaradei, who told the Guardian in Moscow that Iraq could risk severe consequences for its failures to cooperate. His report on January 27 would say Iraq had offered only "partial cooperation".

"Clearly in an environment where there is a lot of impatience, that might not augur well for Iraq," Dr El-Baradei added.

In Washington this week, US officials pressed Dr Blix to interview scientists outside the country, which the US believes will reduce the chances that they can be intimidated into silence. Some argue the inspectors should remove the scientists even if they are unwilling to go, and a senior administration official accused Dr Blix of being so timid he had not even bothered to ask the scientists if they wanted to leave.

"I think in the first instance maybe he would like to get around to inviting somebody. I don't think anyone on the United Nations security council is asking Dr Blix to kidnap anybody," a senior administration official said.

"What we are saying is that if an Iraqi scientist were to volunteer to give information, that that is an option that ought to be available to Dr Blix, and we hope he would take it up."

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