BAGHDAD, Nov 18: Chief UN disarmament expert Hans Blix said on Monday he believed he was “making progress” after a first round of talks with Iraqi officials.

Blix, accompanied by top nuclear expert Mohamed ElBaradei, held talks with President Saddam Hussein’s adviser General Amer al-Saadi, and Blix’s Iraqi counterpart, Brigadier Hossam Amin.

Saadi, a weapons expert, negotiated the modalities of the inspectors’ return with Blix and ElBaradei in Vienna last month.

Aides from both sides were also involved in the meetings at the foreign ministry.

The former Swedish foreign minister is heading a vanguard that will lay the groundwork for inspections under a new UN resolution that grants them unprecedented powers to search suspected sites and question Iraqi experts.

He said inspectors would arrive shortly to begin the inspections on Nov 27.

It will be the first inspections since their predecessors left Baghdad four years ago ahead of US-British air strikes over Iraq’s alleged failure to cooperate.

“We are here to do a job and we will do that professionally and I hope competently,” said the former Swedish foreign minister, disputing suggestions that war or peace depended solely on his men.

“We think that the question of war and peace depends mainly on Iraq on the one hand and on the Security Council on the other,” he said.

“We will report (to the Security Council) objectively. It is for the Security Council to assess if there is a breach or not. We hope there will not be a breach.”

The two dozen experts from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were due to reopen offices unused for four years and set up communications links.

Blix, who heads UNMOVIC, and the IAEA’s director general ElBaradei first visited the headquarters of their UNSCOM predecessors that will also serve as their base at a former hotel in eastern Baghdad.

Joining Blix and ElBaradei at the foreign ministry were several ministry officials, including Said al-Musawi, head of the department of international organizations, and the head of Iraq’s Atomic Energy Agency, Moslim al-Janabi.

Amid scepticism here over the mission, Brigadier Amin, director of the National Monitoring Directorate, and other officials were at the airport to greet the experts.

Blix said UNMOVIC would “receive intelligence information from all over the world”, not necessarily the United States alone.

He said he hoped the “new opportunity” will be used to ultimately relieve Iraq of UN sanctions and in the long term turn the Middle East into a zone free of mass destruction weapons.

Both ElBaradei and his agency’s spokesman addressed Baghdad’s concerns.—AFP