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Feb 10, 2000 - 06:39 PM

Iraq Says It Won't Allow U.N. Arms Monitors to Return

By Leon Barkho - Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq said Thursday that it will not allow U.N. arms inspectors back into the country to reinstate a disarmament program halted on the eve of U.S. and British airstrikes in December 1998.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan branded U.N. arms inspectors as "spies" in the clearest rebuff to date of renewed inspection attempts stipulated in a Dec. 17 U.N. Security Council resolution.

Other Iraqi leaders have decried the resolution, but left open the question of Baghdad's cooperation. Ramadan was blunt.

"There shall be no return of the so-called inspection teams. We reject the infiltration by spies using such cover," the official Iraqi News Agency quoted Ramadan as telling a visiting Russian envoy, Nikolai Kartuzov.

The remarks come as the newly appointed chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix of Sweden, tries to set up a new disarmament commission. Ramadan did not mention Blix by name, but he was appointed under the December resolution.

In Washington, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Iraq's leaders have to make a choice.

"They know what they need to do, and standing in the way and trying to dictate the terms of engagement of any force, or who will lead such a force, is only going to perpetuate a situation that they publicly claim that they want to get out of, which is the U.N. sanctions," Lockhart said.

The U.N. sanctions, which were imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, can be lifted only after Iraq proves to the Security Council it has destroyed its long range missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq maintains it no longer has banned weapons and is demanding the abolition of U.N. sanctions as a condition for the return of arms inspectors.

In New York, U.N. spokesman John Mills said the world body would not respond directly to Ramadan's remarks. But he noted that Blix will not start his new job until around March 1, so "there isn't an inspection mechanism up and functioning at the moment knocking on the door, asking to go into Iraq."

Blix must first organize and staff the new commission. The resolution then calls for inspectors to go to Iraq to draw up a list of remaining arms questions that Iraq must answer before sanctions can be suspended - a list that Blix and the Security Council must approve.

Russia, seen as Iraq's closest ally on the Security Council, sent Kartuzov to Baghdad in a bid to persuade the government to cooperate, Baghdad-based diplomats said. Kartuzov, a former Russian ambassador to Baghdad, also met Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

State-run newspapers on Thursday quoted Aziz as saying Iraq will not cooperate. Last week, Aziz said his government might cooperate if the United Nations made the resolution palatable to Iraq. He did not elaborate.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), February 11, 2000