U.N. Inspectors in Baghdad Forsake Vigil

United Nations weapons inspectors keeping a vigil outside Iraq’s Agriculture Ministry here have left their position and withdrawn to a hotel, witnesses said today.

The head of the U.N. inspectors, Mark Silver, said Tuesday that his team could soon be in jeopardy following demonstrations outside the ministry they have been prevented from entering to search for possible data on Iraqi weapons.

Silver also told Cable News Network in a telephone interview from Baghdad that protests against their presence had become more aggressive and that security the U.N. had requested had not been provided.

“I don’t see the Iraqis letting us inside the building as we stand now,” Silver said. The U.N. inspectors had held a vigil outside the ministry since July 5, demanding admission under Persian Gulf War cease-fire terms.

Waves of demonstrators poured down a main street in front of the ministry Tuesday, taunting the inspectors and burning U.S. flags and effigies of President Bush.

At the United Nations, officials said that some possible measures for dealing with the Iraqi defiance were being discussed by individual governments Tuesday but that no firm proposals have been drafted.

Iraq’s U.N. ambassador was defiant in the face of possible military intervention. “Throwing a bomb or two in Baghdad or here or there is not going to change Iraq’s position,” Ambassador Abdul Amir Anbari told reporters.

The Security Council, meanwhile, rejected Baghdad’s argument that any dealings between Iraq and the United Nations should be conducted outside the Western-dominated U.N. commission overseeing Iraqi compliance with the ease-fire pact.

In other developments:

* U.S. officials could not confirm widespread rumors that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been assassinated. A senior Administration official said there was “no intelligence community information” to support the story.

* In Amman, Jordan, Secretary of State James A. Baker III warned King Hussein that there has been some leakage of goods across the Jordanian border with Iraq in apparent violation of the U.N. embargo.

Times staff writers Jim Mann in Amman and Melissa Healy, David Lauter, Art Pine and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this article.