BAGHDAD, Jan 18: UN disarmament inspectors are employing the methods of the mafia to try to tempt Iraqis to flee abroad, according to an Iraqi scientist who said he turned them down.

Faleh Hassan Hamza, director of the Al-Razi factory which develops lasers and other projects for the military, told reporters Saturday a female inspector from the United States proposed that he leave the country after searching his house.

She took advantage of a moment of absence by an officer from Iraq’s disarmament liaison body.

“When the official from the National Monitoring Directorate left the room for three minutes, the inspector turned to me and asked ‘Are you seeking an alternative?’”

He said she suggested he could leave the country by pretending to take his wife abroad for medical treatment for her diabetes.

“She said they were ready to have my wife cared for outside Iraq and that I could accompany her. I said no thank you.”

“These are the methods of the mafia. They want to create problems between a citizen and his government by claiming to offer an alternative,” said Hamza.

“It’s not just intelligence activities, but mafia behaviour.”

The inspectors seized thousands of documents from his house after a stormy meeting and took photocopies before handing them back.

Under UN Resolution 1441, Iraqi scientists can be taken abroad with their families and interviewed free from any intimidation by the Baghdad regime.

The United States, threatening to disarm Iraq by force if it fails to cooperate totally with the inspectors, is pushing for such interviews, but none have so far taken place.

Hamza, who studied in Edinburgh, Scotland, and worked for Iraq’s Atomic Energy agency until 1994, said he would never go along with the idea of exile.

“Even if I have instructions from my government I will never leave my country. Never ever,” he vowed.

“We prefer to be beggars in our own country than kings abroad.”—AFP