Iraq Says It Will Invite U.N. Experts to Inspect Key Sites

While maintaining a fiery anti-American front, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime changed course Wednesday and announced that it will invite United Nations experts and diplomats to examine presidential palaces suspected of hiding deadly chemical and biological weapons.

But the Iraqis set conditions on the visits, and U.N. officials reacted to the announcement with caution and skepticism.

“Any action by Iraq that would increase our access would be welcome, it would be welcome till the cows come home,” said Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat who heads the U.N. Special Commission that runs the inspection teams.

But sources at the U.N. said Hussein’s offer did not meet the commission’s requirements for inspections to occur without notification to the Iraqis and for the visits to be by trained personnel selected solely by the U.N.

“What is the point of going to a place where you’re invited?” asked one U.N. official, noting that a goal of the inspectors is to root out documents and programs that Iraq may be hiding. The inspection teams are made up of scientists and military experts in chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles.

The Iraqi News Agency said the regime, after a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council headed by Hussein, had decided to invite five experts or diplomats from the 15 nations on the Security Council and two representatives from the 20 nations that have contributed U.N. inspectors to visit the palaces “for a period of one week or more, or for a month, so that they can find out the truth.” Other reports put the number of diplomats and experts who might be involved at more than 100.

The news agency said that Hussein issued the invitation “in response to the lies and falsifications of American officials.”

Despite all the recent argument about the right to inspect presidential palaces, Butler said that U.N. inspectors have never tried to inspect Hussein’s residences. But they have sought unsuccessfully to inspect other buildings and areas designated by Iraq as presidential sites. These include large tracts, some as big as U.S. national parks, as well as clusters of buildings that seem to house suspect activities.

Inspectors also have been blocked or delayed from entering facilities of Iraq’s intelligence service and the Special Republican Guard--the elite units that protect the Iraqi president.

The attempts by the inspectors to enter presidential sites in the last few months evidently contributed to Hussein’s decision last month to expel American members of the inspection teams and to Baghdad’s threat to shoot down the American U-2 reconnaissance plane flying for the U.N.

Those acts led to an escalating war of words between Iraq and the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf region and to a buildup of U.S. military forces there. After a unanimous rebuke by the Security Council and some Russian mediation, Iraq backed down last week and allowed the inspectors to return.

But the Iraqis insisted that presidential palaces and areas designated as presidential sites were still off limits; that declaration brought renewed tension in recent days and another round of tough talk from both sides.

The bellicose rhetoric continued Wednesday, even as Baghdad announced that it will invite outsiders to inspect the palaces.

At the Pentagon, Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni warned that the United States, backed by its Gulf allies, was ready to hit Hussein hard, with “far more than a pinprick,” if military action were deemed necessary; most U.S. strikes against Hussein since the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been characterized by American officials as “pinpricks.”

Zinni--who heads the U.S. Central Command that has deployed warships, planes and 30,000 troops in the Gulf region--said that any strong U.S. military action against Iraq would have the support of the Arab coalition that was allied with the United States in the war.

“Virtually everybody in the region said that,” Zinni said, referring to his recent talks with various leaders in the Middle East. “If Saddam Hussein attacks our U-2, for example, or there’s a requirement to respond, that we ought to do it in a serious way.”

In Iraq, Health Minister Umeed Madhat Mubarak told reporters that the incidence of death among children under the age of 5 had increased almost tenfold because of shortages of medicine due to U.N. sanctions. He spoke as Iraqis cursed President Clinton at a funeral for four children. “Curses upon him,” cried one woman. “He is a dishonest man.”

The dire state of child health in Iraq was underscored at U.N. headquarters in New York by a report of the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. The agency estimated that almost 1 million children in Iraq are chronically malnourished and are bearing the brunt of the economic sanctions imposed on the country after Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The number of malnourished children younger than 5 has risen 72% since 1991, the UNICEF survey concluded. “What we are seeing is a dramatic deterioration in the nutritional well-being of Iraqi children,” said Philippe Heffinick, UNICEF’s representative in Baghdad.

The UNICEF findings came as the Security Council prepared to consider an extension and perhaps expansion of the U.N. program, which expires next Thursday, that permits Iraq to sell $2 billion worth of oil every six months under U.N. supervision. Most of the proceeds are supposed to be spent on food and medicine distributed in Iraq by the U.N., although some of the money goes to war reparations and to support the work of the arms inspectors.

UNICEF reported that there has been no significant improvement in children’s health since the so-called food-for-oil program went into effect late last year.

Meisler reported from Washington and Turner from the United Nations.