Iraqi Official Rejects Return of Inspectors

An Iraqi Cabinet minister said Monday that Baghdad will not allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, a move that could sabotage efforts by the international community to peacefully disarm the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

If the statement reflects Iraq’s position, it could also provide the Bush administration with the leverage it needs to convince reluctant European allies and key Arab regimes that there is no diplomatic alternative to a military confrontation.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf said the United Nations had finished its mission in his country. “The work of inspection teams in Iraq has finished,” he said in an interview with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network, a leading Arabic-language media outlet.

U.S. claims that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction are “a lie,” Sahaf added in the interview, which was conducted in Baghdad. President Bush “knows that he is standing in quicksand when it comes to his baseless talk on Iraq.”

The intent and the veracity of Sahaf’s statement remained unclear.

Just a day earlier, Hussein told a visiting British politician that he had “accepted and would implement” all U.N. resolutions, including “unfettered access” to all sites denied in earlier inspections. The Iraqi leader made the comments during a 95-minute interview in his bunker with George Galloway, a Labor Party member of Parliament who strongly opposes a military campaign against Baghdad.

Galloway described the bunker as so deep that it took 20 seconds to descend to it, according to Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Late Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri announced that Baghdad was preparing a formal reply to a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the status of the weapons inspections.

The White House response to Iraq’s mixed messages was muted, and the United Nations said it would not react until it received formal notification. The information minister’s remarks appeared to take both by surprise.

“You take these things with a grain of salt,” said a Bush administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This is the information minister. Then the foreign minister says something else. We’ll take all of this in and see where we are. But the bottom line is that the inspections are a means to an end, and disarmament is the goal--and disarmament hasn’t been achieved.”

But some American analysts claimed that Sahaf would not take such a tough position unless it reflected Baghdad’s posture.

“He would only reflect a decision. He doesn’t speak on his own; no one in Baghdad does,” said Judith Yaphe, a former intelligence analyst who is now a senior fellow at the National Defense University in Washington. “It’s official Iraq policy or he wouldn’t say it. No government minister speaks out of line.”

Both U.S. officials and Iraq experts outside the government said Iraq may be engaged in a ploy. Baghdad has sent mixed messages about inspections for years, according to Charles Duelfer, who was the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The Iraqis have been very concerned, trying to figure out the messages from Washington. From their perspective, they have a huge problem: Is Washington serious? Does it want the inspectors back or not? Will Iraq be invaded anyway? It doesn’t surprise me at all that they have a range of positions to throw out there,” Duelfer said.

The State Department charged Monday that the Iraqis were merely trying to divert attention.

“They refuse to face up to their obligations, and obfuscate and look for ways to move the goalposts when it’s a simple situation,” department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said. “Iraq needs to disarm.”

Duelfer and others predicted that Sahaf’s statement and even the impending formal response to the United Nations will not be the final word.

“They will try to reengage the U.N. when it’s more evident that the U.S. is starting to build up its forces. They’ll be looking for another way out,” Duelfer said. “That’s a card Saddam will play at some point down the road,” as he did before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Sahaf’s statement came as six Iraqi opposition groups continued talks Monday with Bush administration officials in Washington. The groups, based in Britain, Iran and the Kurdistan area of northern Iraq, met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and the State Department’s Iraq experts.

U.S. officials said the groups were pressing for a tougher commitment to act if Baghdad moves again on northern Kurdistan, as it did in 1996 and in the 1980s, when it used chemical weapons.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this report.