February 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 2,1423

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UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3: European Parliament members who met chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix here on Monday said they gave him new evidence from Iraq that illegal weapons components were being stored in secret.

Emma Nicholson, the British vice-chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told reporters “this information has come from inside Iraq in the past few days”.

She said she had given the information to Mr Blix after he assured her that her sources would be protected, and she said would present him with more evidence later.

The delegation of European legislators also met the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Douri, and the deputy US ambassador, James Cunningham.

“I gave Dr. Blix evidence on two counts,” Mr Nicholson said.

One covered previously unidentified sites “where weapons of mass destruction material is being secretly stored”, she said.

The other was an order form that showed that the Iraqi government “have continued to order material for WMD (weapons of mass destruction) right until last month”, she said.

The form was for “a form of tubing”, Nicholson said, but she added that she was not a scientist and that it was for Blix to assess the value of her evidence.

In Baghdad, presidential adviser Amer Saadi said Iraq was “not worried” by any such claims of new evidence.

“We welcome anybody who claims that he has evidence that we are hiding something or attempting something proscribed,” he told reporters.

“We are not worried. If we have not done anything like that, why should we be worried?” he asked after a meeting with a group of 32 European MPs visiting Baghdad to discuss the threat of war in Iraq.

Saadi said “the sooner they give it to the two agencies, the better.”

He was referring to the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) whose inspectors have been on the ground in Iraq since late November.

FUNDING DROPPED: The United States has dropped all funding for the Iraqi opposition in its proposed fiscal 2004 budget in a sign that it believes the foes of President Saddam Hussein will be running the country or otherwise self-supporting next year, officials said Monday.

Washington’s proposed 28.5-billion-dollar international affairs spending plan pointedly deletes funding for the Iraqi opposition which had been given 25 million dollars in both fiscal 2002 and fiscal 2003.

“In looking at ‘04 we believed ... funding the opposition at that level in ‘04 would not be necessary,” said Joe Boab, a senior State Department budget official.

Boab declined to say exactly what the department’s accountants believed would happen that led them to defund the Iraqi opposition but told reporters that the decision was made based on the understanding that it would not need US assistance.

Asked about alternatative funding, Boab allowed that revenue from Iraq’s oil fields was a possible source.—AFP