U.S. Vows to Give Asylum to Key Iraqis

The United States has promised the United Nations that it will permanently resettle Iraqi scientists who provide information on Baghdad’s secret arms programs, U.S. officials said Friday. Some family members also could be granted asylum.

The Bush administration has provided weapons inspectors with a list of between 80 and 100 names of key scientists involved in developing Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles. Each is considered a potential source for information on Baghdad’s past and present clandestine programs, U.S. officials say.

Washington is pressing chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to begin “inviting” about two dozen Iraqi scientists to travel to Cyprus as early as next week for interviews, the sources added. The Mediterranean island is the backup staging post for the inspection teams.

“We hope the U.N. teams will start this process as soon as possible, hopefully next week,” a State Department official said Friday.

U.S. and U.N. officials agree that the scientists are more likely to reveal secrets if they and their families are in a secure location outside Iraq. So far, scientists have refused to be interviewed except in the presence of an Iraqi government official, apparently to avoid reprisals against themselves and their families.

The inspections are expected to intensify over the next few weeks, with more sites visited and more scientists interviewed, administration officials said. On Jan. 27, Blix is scheduled to give the U.N. Security Council a more definitive declaration of the results of the new inspections, although administration officials insist that the date is not a deadline for a war decision.

Although the United States has argued since September that defecting Iraqi scientists are likely to provide more useful information than on-site inspections, the Bush administration has resisted offering to resettle large numbers of potential defectors and their families. As in the past, Washington had been encouraging European allies to take the lead.

Other allied nations, including Britain, have offered to take in some of the hoped-for wave of scientists or engineers who don’t want to remain in Iraq, but the United States is now expected to accept the bulk of them, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. decision to accept potential Iraqi defectors follows complaints by Blix in early December that the United States was pressing him to run a “defection agency” -- a task for which the United Nations is ill-equipped.

National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack downplayed the resettlement pledge, insisting that the United States has offered all along to secure the safety of Iraqi scientists.

“We have assured the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. weapons inspectors that we will do everything we can as a government to ensure that those who choose to cooperate with the inspectors in carrying out their duties will be able to do so without threat to themselves or their families,” McCormack said.

Last fall, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to expand the number of Iraqi scientists the administration could bring to the United States.

Under current legislation, the administration can grant political asylum to 100 people of any nationality each year who might provide useful intelligence. The proposed law would have permitted as many as 500 Iraqi scientists and their families to be granted political asylum. The bill died because of procedural reasons before the end of the session.

Congressional sources said the bill is likely to be reintroduced in the new session of Congress that began this month. However, an administration official said that there are several legal mechanisms for granting the scientists permanent residency in the United States and that it would not be necessary to grant them political asylum.

Of the estimated 18,000 scientists, engineers and technicians who have worked on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials believe about 500 might have significant information that would help the U.N. teams. U.S. intelligence has narrowed down the list in recent weeks to names of specialists with the most vital or current data, the sources added.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell repeated Friday that interviews with scientists outside Iraq are a priority for the United States and the United Nations.

“The U.N. resolution is clear that they should be made available,” Powell said. “One way to do that safely is to remove them from the country so that they’re not subject to threats and intimidation, nor are their family members.”

Although U.N. teams recently interviewed a couple of Iraqi scientists, Blix has been reluctant to accelerate the process in part because of concerns about what will happen to the extended family members, U.S. officials said.

“There are a lot of scared scientists out there,” said a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity.

Blix has indicated that the scientists’ interviews will become a more important and visible part of the inspections.

“This remains one of the options, and I’m sure we will begin some interviews very soon, within a week or so,” Blix said Thursday, the day he briefed the Security Council on the status of the inspections. “There are several options on how you conduct the interviews that the Security Council has given us, and we will make sure of what is appropriate in each case.”

In meetings with senior administration officials in Washington on Friday, the top U.N. nuclear expert pressed for the U.S. to provide more intelligence to the inspectors. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and members of Congress.

“We need more actionable information,” ElBaradei said. “We have a good process of a dialogue with the United States and with other intelligence agencies, and I hope in the next few weeks this process will intensify and that we’ll get additional information that can accelerate our job in the field.”

Administration sources said Friday that the U.S. had not handed over some information because the U.N. has not had enough inspectors or the appropriate specialists in place to pursue the intelligence leads that Washington can provide.

After his talks with Powell, ElBaradei also called on Iraq for more “proactive cooperation” because the inspections were only “inching along.”