VIENNA, October 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Amidst U.S. calls for a delay of any mission to Iraq, talks on new U.N. arms inspections resumed in Vienna on Tuesday, October 1, after a preparatory meeting between the two sides.

“We have so much to talk about,” chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told reporters on his way into the second day of talks, aimed at a deal for U.N. inspectors to return to Iraq after a four-year hiatus, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that U.N. inspectors should delay any mission to Iraq until the U.N. Security Council finishes deliberations on a possible new resolution that would tighten up the inspection regime.

But Blix said earlier Tuesday that his orders came from the U.N. top decision-making body and not Washington. “I am asked by the Security Council to do this job and I do it,” said Blix.

Meanwhile, Baghdad accused the United States Tuesday of trying to derail the resumption of U.N. arms monitoring as a prelude to an attack on Iraq, AFP reported.

With UN officials reporting progress in the first day of talks with Iraq in Vienna, Al-Rafidain, a weekly run by President Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday, said it expected the inspectors to fly into Baghdad on October 16.

“There is no need for a new resolution since the Security Council already issued Resolution 1284 (in December 1999) that created UNMOVIC,” the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush turned up the heat on the inspectors “as soon as a positive step was taken in the direction of implementing their mandate,” said Abderrazzak al-Dulaimi, dean of the information faculty at Baghdad University.

“Iraq realizes that the Bush administration will try to obstruct the inspectors’ mission ... but it (Iraq) will handle the issue in such a way as to thwart Washington's hostile plans,” he told AFP.

“We are moving forward with our discussions under our mandate and will of course take into account any directions from the Security Council,” said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“We are moving forward with our business. We have to proceed as if we will return,” she said.

The Iraqis were “trying their best ... to expedite our requirements for effective inspections,” Blix said after the first of two days of talks in Vienna.

Al-Rafidain, declaring that Iraq had “completed preparations to receive the inspectors,” quoted a senior Iraqi arms expert as saying the Vienna talks were proceeding “in a very positive way at the moment.”

Blix “told the Iraqi side he was determined to close the outstanding files (on prohibited weapons) as quickly as possible ... as a prelude to asking the Security Council to fulfill its own obligations under Resolution 687, chiefly the lifting of the embargo” in force against Iraq for 12 years, it said.

But the Bush administration will try to foil the talks as part of the “psychological war” it has been waging against Iraq to set the stage for an attack on the country, Al-Rafidain said.

Will Blix “be able to resist pressures, or will he, like his predecessors, become a tool in the hands of the United States, which wants to block inspections so as to perpetuate the UN embargo on Iraq?” the weekly wondered.