The director of the UN arms inspectorate, Mr Richard Butler, told the Security Council yesterday that Iraq seemed determined to withhold any new information about its weapons programmes and to prevent UN inspectors from obtaining it themselves if that meant entering certain sites.
Mr Butler, who heads the UN Special Commission (Unscom) in charge of decommissioning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, also said in a written report that the tone of talks he held this week in Baghdad was very different from the tone he had encountered there in the past.
He said: "The talks were characterised, from the beginning, by extended statements by the Iraqi side to which no remotely equal reply was invited, accepted or apparently wanted; moments of abuse and denigration of Unscom and its professional officers; an attempt to apportion literally all blame to Unscom, past and present, for the fact that the disarmament task has not been completed and sanctions on Iraq remained in force."
The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, called on Mr Butler to delay further discussions about allowing Unscom teams to inspect sensitive sites, such as socalled "presidential palaces", until at least April, assuming the successful conclusion of technical talks on various weapons issues due to start in February.
Mr Butler said Iraq's account of its relationship with Unscom was "significantly flawed" and there had been "grave instances of attempts to mislead the Commission and the [Security] Council". He said: "First, between 1991 and 1995 Iraq robustly denied that it had any offensive biological weapons programme. This was utterly false.
"Secondly, until 1995 Iraq denied any production of VX [a deadly nerve gas]. After inquiries from Unscom, Iraq elicited a declaration that it had produced only 260 litres of VX. Today we know that Iraq has produced at least 3.9 tons of VX."