- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior
Iraqi official said on Thursday five weeks of intrusive U.N. weapons inspections
had proved that U.S. allegations that Iraq was developing weapons of mass
destruction were baseless.
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- General Hussam Mohammad Amin said U.N. inspectors had
visited 230 sites since they returned to the country on November 27 and
had found nothing incriminating.
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- "All those activities prove that the Iraqi declarations
are credible and the American allegations are baseless. They are lying
for political reasons," he told a news conference.
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- "The inspectors did not find any prohibited activities
or prohibited items in those 230 sites that have been visited till now,"
Amin, the chief Iraqi official liaising with U.N. inspectors, said.
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- He said the inspectors were intrusive because they went
beyond searching for banned weapons by looking at documents, requesting
meetings with staff and inspecting the commercial activities of the sites.
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- Amin confirmed that chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix would
visit Baghdad in the third week of January, before he reports back to the
Security Council on January 27.
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- He said the visit was "a positive indication on
the road to removing any difficulties and implementing Security Council
resolutions."
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- He said the inspections showed clearly that Iraq had
not exploited the four year absence of inspectors to develop weapons of
mass destruction as claimed by the United States and Britain.
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- He said most visited sites had been cited by Washington
and London as facilities where Iraq was working on nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons.
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- Amin said the inspectors were at times too aggressive,
echoing complaints by heads of some inspected facilities about the behavior
of the experts. One chief of a plant accused them this week of behaving
like gangsters.
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- Amin said the inspectors were due to launch an aerial
inspection on Wednesday using helicopters but the mission was postponed
due to technical problems.
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- He said the inspectors and Iraqi monitors were setting
up a base in the northern town of Mosul.
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