Dec 5, 2002 5 min read

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – International inspectors roared up to one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces Tuesday and demanded and received quick entry, in an early test of new powers to hunt for weapons of mass destruction anywhere, anytime in Iraq. A key Iraqi official said, meanwhile, that the Baghdad government, in a long-awaited declaration later this week, will reaffirm its position that it no longer has such weapons.

The U.N. weapons monitors found spectacle and opulence inside the sprawling, riverside Al-Sajoud palace. But there was no word that they found anything else. A day earlier, the United Nations announced inspectors could not find some equipment they were looking for at a missile-related site; it was not the first time in a week of inspections that such a problem arose.

Iraqis said Tuesday, as they have on previous days, that they cooperated with the inspectors.

Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer, told journalists after Tuesday’s presidential search: “The inspectors were happy.”

The U.N. team left the west Baghdad grounds after 11/2 hours and had no comment for reporters, as has been their practice. The visit itself carried a message: that this time the inspectors have a free run of Iraq, under a Security Council mandate requiring the Baghdad government to give up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Once the inspectors left, reporters were briefly allowed inside the palace’s spectacular, eight-sided entry hall. Each of the walls was inscribed in huge gold letters with a poem praising Saddam.

In the 1990s, the Iraqis sought to bar U.N. monitors from Saddam’s palaces. It took personal negotiations between Saddam and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to reach an accommodation: Inspectors could visit with diplomatic escort and notice. Those teams found nothing.

A U.N. resolution adopted last month mandates unrestricted access at all Iraqi sites. The security staff at Al-Sajoud clearly was aware of the new powers, taking just seven minutes of radio consultation before opening the towering, ornate gates Tuesday.

As usual, Saddam’s whereabouts were not publicly known. He is known to move about frequently among dozens of presidential palaces across Iraq.

Meanwhile Tuesday, the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said an Iraqi boat fired on two Kuwaiti coast guard vessels in northern Kuwaiti waters. The Kuwaiti vessels fired back. No injuries in the firing were reported.

Iraq, which did not comment on the firing, and Kuwait have not had relations since the 1991 Gulf War, in which a U.S.-led coalition liberated the oil-rich Kuwait from a seven-month Iraqi occupation. Few clashes along the Kuwaiti-Iraqi land and naval borders have been reported in recent years.

The dramatic, unannounced call on Al-Sajoud came on the sixth day of the inspections, which have been renewed after a four-year break.

The inspectors thus far, in more than a dozen field missions, have reported unimpeded access and Iraqi cooperation. In a speech Monday, however, President Bush contended that so far in the inspection process, “the signs are not encouraging.”

The Bush administration alleges Iraq retains chemical and biological weapons – missed during the 1990s inspections – and has not abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

Bush threatens to wage war on Iraq – with or without U.N. sanction – if it doesn’t disarm. Other governments say that only the Security Council can authorize an attack on Iraq in a situation not involving immediate self-defense.

On Tuesday, Gen. Amin told Baghdad reporters that an Iraqi declaration on its weapons required to be given to the United Nations by the end of the week “will include new elements, but those new elements don’t mean that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

“Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.”

The inspectors of the 1990s eliminated tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them, dismantled Iraq’s effort to build nuclear bombs, and destroyed scores of longer-range Iraqi missiles. Those inspectors suspect they didn’t find all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

On Monday, among other visits, inspectors searched the Karama missile design plant in Baghdad – a revisit to a site inspected in the 1990s. The inspectors wanted to ensure that this key installation was not involved in producing missiles capable of ranges beyond the 90 miles permitted by U.N. resolutions after Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War.

The U.N. agency reported their inspectors found that equipment which had been tagged by earlier inspectors at Karama was missing. The Iraqis said some of it had been destroyed in U.S. bombing in 1998, when 18 cruise missiles struck the site, and some had been transferred to other locations.

Twice last week at other sites, the inspectors traced other equipment at first thought to be missing to other locations.

In Vienna on Tuesday, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the body would later this month begin analyzing samples gathered by its inspectors in Iraq. The agency, which is overseeing the hunt for Iraqi nuclear weapons, did not expect to present results before Jan. 27 at the earliest.

In a related development, an inspection team official said on condition of anonymity Monday that Iraqi had admitted it had tried, unsuccessfully, to import aluminum tubes that the United States had said might help Iraq build a nuclear bomb. The inspection team official refused to elaborate. Iraq denies it still has nuclear weapons ambitions.