LARNACA (Cyprus), Nov 17: The chief UN arms inspector said here on Sunday on the last stop en route to Iraq that he would not accept Baghdad’s insistence it had no more weapons of mass destruction at face value.

“We do not take no for an answer,” despite previous declarations by the Iraqi government that it has scrapped all its banned weaponry, said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“We’re going to do a thorough and independent inspection,” he told a press conference on arrival in Cyprus from Vienna together with Hans Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

Blix stressed that it was not up to the inspectors to judge if Iraq was in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 on disarmament, under which the United States has threatened to launch military action if Baghdad fails to cooperate fully.

“We will be carrying out inspections and report cooperation and lack of cooperation and leave it up to the Security Council to assess that, not us,” said Blix, who with ElBaradei is to fly on Monday to Baghdad with an advance team of inspectors.

On the task facing UNMOVIC, he said: “There’s lots of allegations about concealment of mobile targets and it would be a challenge to find underground installations, and we hope to get tips from member states” of the United Nations.

By Dec 8, Iraq must make a full and accurate declaration of its programmes to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other delivery systems.

Iraq has declared already that it has abandoned banned weapons programmes, despite US statements that it has continued to develop these programmes in the four-year hiatus since the last UN inspectors left the country.—AFP