U.S.-Led Inspection Team to Leave Iraq

The U.N. weapons inspection team accused by Iraq of fronting for an American spy will leave Baghdad as scheduled today after being blocked in its investigation by the Iraqi government, officials said Thursday.

The 28 inspectors led by retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Scott Ritter were prevented from visiting sites suspected of harboring evidence of Iraqi biological weapons research after the Iraqi government branded Ritter a U.S. agent, an allegation denied by Ritter and the U.N.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz also complained that the team included too many Americans and Britons. Ten of the inspectors are American and five are British.

Iraq’s recalcitrance triggered a new confrontation with the U.N. and the American government and raises the stakes in meetings next week between Aziz and Richard Butler, who chairs the U.N. disarmament commission. Butler left for Baghdad on Thursday night.

Ritter is based in New York, and the team he led was assembled for this week’s mission, according to Charles Duelfer, deputy chairman of the commission. Although the U.N. maintains some inspectors in Baghdad on a long-term basis, others move in and out of Iraq as needed.

Other inspections at sites associated with biological munitions and missiles have continued this week while the Ritter team was blocked.

Duelfer said the decision to withdraw the team does not change Ritter’s status or mean the U.N. is backing down from its position that the inspectors require unfettered access to complete their job of assuring that Iraq has eliminated its atomic, chemical and biological weapons programs and its long-range missiles. He added that access to sites would be “No. 1 on the agenda” when Butler meets with Aziz on Monday and Tuesday.

Duelfer said Butler telephoned Ritter on Thursday afternoon and advised him to take the team out of the country as scheduled.

“It was the end of the time we had planned for inspections, and we saw no point in extending them,” he said. “Some of these guys have other jobs to go to, and there was no point in having them sitting around Baghdad.”

Although U.N. officials said as recently as noon Thursday that there were no plans to withdraw the Ritter-led team, Butler advised the Security Council on Wednesday that the group probably would leave as scheduled regardless of whether it had completed its work, according to two sources at the meeting.

Ritter’s group specializes in penetrating Iraq’s programs for concealing illegal weapons, among other tasks, and was searching for records of biological weapons research, including evidence of past experiments on prisoners. Although inspectors were permitted to work Monday, they were blocked Tuesday and Wednesday when the Iraqi government refused to provide the escorts they need to get into restricted sites.

Aziz adamantly denied that Iraq carried out human experiments, and the U.N. has carefully said it has no proof of such activities, despite allegations by Iraqi dissident groups. In a seizure of biological weapons data two years ago, the inspectors did obtain a photograph of a man’s arm scarred with lesions, but the U.N. does not consider that evidence of human experimentation, U.N. officials said Thursday.

The same cache of documents, hidden on a chicken farm outside Baghdad, included videotapes of dogs writhing and dying in agony in biological weapons testing, U.N. officials confirmed Thursday. Iraq previously has acknowledged testing biological weapons on animals.

Meanwhile, Russia, France and China volunteered more of their nationals to work as inspectors in an apparent effort to meet Iraqi objections that there are too many American and British investigators.