Iraq Again Bars American U.N. Weapons Inspectors

U.N. officials Sunday sought to defuse an escalating crisis after Iraq turned away three American members of a United Nations team when they arrived in Baghdad to resume arms inspections.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Sunday that he was sending a three-man mission to Baghdad today to try to resolve the situation, although it was not immediately known if Iraq would agree to receive the U.N. mission.

The White House welcomed the U.N. mission, but its envoy to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, said President Clinton’s administration was not ruling out force against Iraq.

Richardson said he and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had been working closely over the weekend with France and Russia, among other Security Council members, on a response.

The Security Council is to hold closed-door consultations today about the deepening crisis.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein discussed with his ministers how to respond to any possible U.S. military action, the official Iraqi News Agency said.

In the United States, Republican and Democratic congressional leaders said they would support prompt military action to force Iraqi compliance.

Iraqi television showed several thousand Iraqis demonstrating in the southern city of Basra and the northern town of Mosul, raising portraits of Hussein and chanting anti-American slogans.

The three Americans were turned away “in a polite way” when they arrived as part of a U.N. inspection team at Habbaniyah airport near Baghdad from Bahrain, a diplomat in the Iraqi capital said.

Iraq’s declaration Wednesday that it was ousting U.S. members of the U.N. weapons inspection team and its barring of two American inspectors the next day from reentering the country were Baghdad’s response to a resolution considered by the Security Council last month to ban travel abroad by Iraqi officials who interfered with the work of U.N. inspectors.