January 5, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 1, 1423

BAGHDAD, Jan 4: UN disarmament experts continued their hunt Saturday for weapons of mass destruction, vetting sites in Iraq’s second city of Basra for the first time and setting up a temporary base in the northern town of Mosul.

Biological warfare experts from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) who travelled the 550 kilometres south from the capital the previous day inspected two colleges of Basra University to gather information about professors and researchers, a foreign ministry statement said.

Basra, a major port on the Gulf close to Kuwait and Iran, suffered massive damage during the 1991 Gulf War.

The inspectors also set up a temporary base at the Nineveh Palace hotel in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad.

“We will use the hotel as a temporary base until such time when we open a regional center” in northern Iraq, spokesman Hiro Ueki told AFP by telephone from Mosul.

“That will happen sometime later,” he added without specifying when he expected the regional center to open.

Ueki said a team of inspectors would spend the night in Mosul and visit a site there on Sunday.

A total of seven sites were checked Saturday, the 36th day of work since UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) relaunched inspections in Iraq on November 27 after a four-year break, according to the foreign ministry statement.

Nuclear specialists went to the Al-Mamoun plant, 60 kilometres south of Baghdad, the Al-Abour plant, 30 kilometres west of the capital, and an aluminium smelter.

A chemical team visited the Ibn Sina firm, which is part of Iraq’s military industrialization organization, 35 kilometres north of Baghdad, and which, the ministry noted, figures on the British government’s list of suspect sites and has already been inspected several times.

A mixed team of chemical and ballistics experts visited a helicopter base at Al-Suwaira, some 60 kilometres south of Baghdad, and a team of biological experts inspected an alcohol factory at Al-Khalis, 70 kilometres northeast of the capital.

The experts have visited 230 sites since the resumption of inspections, 37 of which had not been previously checked, the head of Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, General Hossam Mohammad Amin, said Thursday.

Amin said chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix would visit Baghdad in the third week of January.

Iraq has invited Blix for talks ahead of a report he is due to present to the UN Security Council on January 27 on Baghdad’s cooperation with the inspectors.

The United States is threatening to disarm Iraq by force, but Baghdad insists it no longer has any prohibited weapons.

Babel newspaper, run by President Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday, claimed Iraq has outmanoeuvred the United States and removed any excuse for waging war against the Baghdad regime.

“An attack against Iraq can no longer be justified because we have pulled the rug from under the feet of the US administration thanks to our wise policy which has shown our sincerity and exposed the lies and fairy tales,” the tabloid said.

It saw a “transformation” in the US stance on Iraq after President George W. Bush said he hoped war could be avoided, but added that the US leader “is still looking for a means of saving face.”

Babel said Bush could still unleash a war to forget “the failure of his administration to eliminate the Al Qaeda network and strengthen his chances of re-election. “Bush must see reason, particularly since the world has realized that we are for peace and do not possess, and do not intend to possess, weapons of mass destruction.”

VOLUNTEERS: With the United States escalating the war rhetoric, an official newspaper said Iraq was preparing to welcome thousands of people from across the world who have offered to act as “human shields”.

Al-Qadissiyah quoted former Jordanian MP Mansur Murad, who has been campaigning for volunteers, as saying some 100,000 people had already come forward.

However, the daily gave no dates for the arrival of the volunteers, nor their exact numbers.

cover up other aims: Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov said accusations of hidden weapons made against Iraq “serve no purpose, and only strengthen the fear around the world that the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is being used to cover up other aims.”

Without mentioning any country by name, Trubnikov said “If somebody possesses genuine information on the presence in Iraq of forbidden weapons, or the continuation of attempts to build them, it would be logical to submit such information to the UN’s inspection agencies — the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Over a hundred inspectors from those international bodies are currently in Iraq, and could check on the ground whatever information may be worrying such and such a country,” he added.—AFP/Reuters