Iraq Offer to Open Sites Excludes U.N. Team

The volatile confrontation between Iraq and the United Nations intensified again Thursday as Baghdad announced that its presidential sites would remain off limits to U.N. weapons inspectors despite President Saddam Hussein’s promise to allow foreign diplomats and experts inside.

The latest stance of the Iraqis--outlined by Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf at a news conference in Baghdad--dashed hopes that the invitation to foreigners made only 24 hours earlier was a face-saving way for Iraq to back down and let the inspectors of the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, finish their efforts to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

Despite the defiance, it was still difficult to tell how much of the Iraqi vitriol was bluster and how much reflected resolve to test the will of the Clinton administration.

The White House tried to make it clear that the angry rhetoric from Baghdad had not changed the U.S. demand that Iraq must let the inspectors go anywhere they want.

“As we have said before, and as the [U.N.] Security Council has said unambiguously and unanimously through its resolutions,” said a senior White House official, “the UNSCOM inspectors must be permitted to do their jobs and must have unconditional and unfettered access.”

In Baghdad, Sahaf told the news conference that Iraq’s invitation for foreign diplomats and experts to tour the presidential palaces and other sites did not include the inspectors responsible for finding evidence of weapons and weapon development.

“Again I repeat, all sovereign sites are fully immune and are completely outside the work of the Special Commission,” he said.

Iraqi television later reported that Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz had sent the U.N. an invitation indicating that as many as 117 international diplomats and other observers would be admitted to presidential buildings and that Iraq would pay their expenses.

U.N. officials, however, have said they see little to be gained in sending diplomats untrained in weapons detection on guided tours conducted by the Iraqis.

Richard Butler, the Australian diplomat who heads UNSCOM, has said his inspectors must have full access to facilities they suspect of housing chemical and biological weapons development, including some presidential sites.

The inspectors, Butler has told reporters, have not asked to investigate presidential residences but have sought admittance to other presidential compounds, some as large as a U.S. national park.

Sahaf said the ruling Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council had invited diplomats and experts to visit these sites to disprove what he called a “wave of false allegations and lies” about hidden Iraqi weapons and technology.

There had been some hope that the invitation would include the inspectors since it had been extended to diplomats and experts from the 15 member nations of the Security Council and the 20 nations that contribute members of the inspection teams.

But Sahaf said Iraq was not retreating from its opposition to the inspectors. “This is not backtracking,” he said. “This proposal has nothing to do with backtracking, and there will be no backtracking.”

The foreign minister said the delegations of foreigners would see everything. “There is nothing in these places,” he said. “We will take them to every place.”

Even before Sahaf’s statement that arms inspectors could not visit the presidential sites, U.N. sources had said the Iraqis’ offer did not meet the commission’s need for inspections to occur without notification and by trained personnel.

Iraq has made similar offers in the past, all of which have been rejected by the U.N. At one point, the Iraqis refused a U.N. inspection team entry to a suspect facility, offering instead to send Baghdad’s diplomatic corps through the building.

Hussein’s government precipitated a four-week crisis Oct. 29 when it demanded that Americans participating on the inspection teams leave Iraq. When the Americans were finally expelled Nov. 13, Butler withdrew all other inspectors rather than allow Iraq to dictate the nationalities of his team members.

The crisis eased a week later when Soviet Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov persuaded Iraq to drop its ban on U.S. inspectors. In exchange, Primakov said he promised Iraq that he would work for a speedy end to economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Iraq at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But these sanctions, according to U.N. resolutions, cannot be lifted until Butler’s commission certifies that Iraq is rid of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles.

Since their return to Iraq, the U.N. inspectors have worked without hindrance by the Iraqis. But they have made no attempt to enter any site that the Iraqis have classified as presidential.

At the time they announced their intent to expel U.S. inspectors, the Iraqis also threatened to shoot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane on loan to the U.N. disarmament team. Iraq has not fired on several U-2 flights carried out since that threat, which Sahaf repeated Thursday.

He said the only reason Iraq has not attempted to bring down the U-2 is that it has been flying outside the range of its gunners, adding that each American U-2 pilot was flying as if he were “a frightened rat.”

The U.S. government has warned that any attempt to bring down a U-2 flight would be met with military retaliation. The United States has about 20,000 troops, two aircraft carriers, and numerous other planes and warships in the Persian Gulf region.

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In a related development, the Iraqi National Assembly met and issued a statement requesting that the United Nations finish its inspections within six months of Nov. 20, the day Iraq announced it would allow U.N. inspectors to return.

A U.N. official also reported Thursday that Iraq has raised some objections to renewing a much-heralded oil-for-food program. A year ago, the United Nations and Iraq agreed to a program that allowed Iraq to sell $2 billion worth of oil every six months, principally to purchase food and medicine.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been considering asking the Security Council to raise that figure to $3 billion when the program comes up for its second six-month renewal on Dec. 5.

But Eric Falt, a U.N. official in Baghdad, said Iraq had objected to some technical matters, such as the difficulties in the delivery of the food and medicine.