BAGHDAD, Dec 22: Iraq is ready to answer any questions from the United States and Britain about its arms declaration and said on Sunday that the CIA was welcome to come and indicate suspect sites to the UN weapons inspectors.

“We are ready to deal with each of those questions if you ask us,” Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein, told a news conference at which he also accused previous inspection regimes of manipulating evidence against Iraq.

“We do not even have any objections if the CIA sent somebody with the inspectors to show them the suspected sites.”

Saddam himself demanded the US stop harassing him: “The world should tell America now there is no need for more aggression and sanctions on Iraq in order to let it cooperate freely (with the UN),” he told visiting delegates.

Saadi said chief weapons inspector Hans Blix had sent Iraq a “formal request to provide a list of certain scientists and we are going to provide that list before the end of this year”.

There has been growing talk of war since the United States last week condemned Iraq’s UN-ordered declaration of its weapons programmes as incomplete and so a “material breach” of Security Council Resolution 1441 on Iraqi disarmament. Defying the resolution carries an implicit threat of eventual war.—Reuters