Blix and ElBaradei still need time

UNITED NATIONS, January 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq has illegally imported missile engines and fuel and unsuccessfully tried to buy aluminum tubes, but it is unclear they were meant for banned weapons, UN arms inspectors told the Security Council Thursday, January 9.

"Inspections have confirmed the presence of a relatively large number of missile engines, some imported as late as 2002," chief UN inspector Hans Blix said in a statement to the council made available to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In a three-hour closed briefing, Blix told the council Iraq had also imported raw materials for the production of solid rocket fuel.

All military sales to Iraq are banned under council resolutions adopted after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. But the resolutions do not forbid Iraq to have conventional arms.

They do bar Iraq from possessing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles with a range of 150 kilometers (93 miles) or more, and insist on the destruction of those already in Iraqi hands.

Blix said the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission had yet to determine whether the imported engines were intended for missiles in that category.

The UN commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency began inspections in Iraq November 27 to track down prohibited arms.

The IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, told the council Iraq had admitted trying to import high-strength aluminum tubes in 2001 and 2002 for a program aimed at reverse engineering of 81-millimetre rockets.

Reverse engineering involves dismantling a finished product to see how it was manufactured. It is usually forbidden by copyright and patents law.

The IAEA had carried out inspections, interviewed Iraqi scientists and taken samples to see whether the tubes had been diverted to making centrifuges needed to refine atomic fuels to military grade, ElBaradei said.

Washington has charged the tubes were to be used to make nuclear bombs.

"We told the council that we have been investigating Iraqi report that they have imported aluminum tubes for rockets and not for centrifuge, not for uranium enrichment," ElBaradei said.

"The question is still open, but we believe at this stage that these aluminum tubes were intended for manufacturing of rockets."

Blix said questions about the missile parts and the tubes were among those which Iraq had failed to answer and which continued to cast doubt on its claim to have complied with council resolutions.

Other questions concerned the production of anthrax, bacteriological growth media and the nerve gas VX as well as the amount of chemical munitions which Iraq claimed to have used up during its war with Iraq in 1980-88.

Iraqi scientists to be interviewed in Cyprus: report

Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists are soon to be whisked out of the country for questioning in Cyprus, the Guardian daily reported Thursday.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides told the left-wing British paper: "It seems they will be coming."

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who briefed the UN security council Thursday on the work of his inspectors in Iraq, appears to be bowing to U.S. pressure to make use of his powers to take inspectors out of the country, the Guardian said.

Cypriot officials said it was likely the scientists would be interviewed in the Larnaca hotel where the inspectors have set up their main field and administrative center. The Iraqi scientists and their families would be put up in the hotel.

Cassoulides told the Guardian that as the inspectors had their field headquarters in Cyprus, "it is quite natural that the inspectors would be wanting to come here".

He added: "Informal contacts have been made as our policy is to cooperate with the UN. We would not object as long as they (the scientists) only stay for a few days."

But describing the expected arrival of the scientists as "a high security risk", he said the Cypriot authorities would want to "negotiate certain aspects" of their stay.

One high-ranking foreign ministry aide told the Guardian that the UN had "not come back to us with a date because the policy seems to be one of complete blackout so they can move quickly when the time comes".