November 20, 2002	Wednesday	Ramazan 14, 1423

BAGHDAD, Nov 19: Iraqi officials have pledged to give “full cooperation and full transparency” to disarmament inspectors, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said here on Tuesday.

“All Iraqi officials have committed to provide us full cooperation and full transparency,” he said at a press conference after a second and final day of talks in Baghdad.

“The Iraqis said they will do everything that is humanly possible to cooperate with the two organizations,” he said in reference to the IAEA and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix, who arrived on Monday to relaunch arms inspections after a four-year break, said he had two days of “constructive discussions ... about how we can resume inspections ... on the basis of the resolutions of the Security Council.

“We have touched upon many practical arrangements and been able to agree upon those,” he said.

Blix and ElBaradei met Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on Tuesday followed by talks with the same Iraqi officials they saw in a first round the previous night.

A foreign ministry statement said Sabri assured the two men of Iraq’s readiness to “facilitate the work of the two organizations” in such a way as to “refute US allegations that Iraq has been producing mass destruction weapons in the absence of inspectors” and thus lead to a lifting of UN sanctions.

“We have pledged to the Iraqi side to progress towards resolving the Iraqi issue,” ElBaradei said after the meeting.

A top adviser to President Saddam Hussein also told reporters that Iraq would meet the Dec 8 deadline to issue a report declaring all its weapons programs.

Asked if Iraq would hand over the report in time, General Amer al-Saadi, a weapons expert, said: “Yes, within 30 days as the resolution (1441) says, a report from Iraq will be submitted on all the files — nuclear, chemical, biological and missile files.”—AFP