IRAQ: UN weapons inspectors searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction are concerned that their efforts may come to nothing since the US and Britain seem to have already opted for war.
The inspectors have seen "a lot, resolved many issues and got reasonably good co-operation" from the Iraqi government, a source within the inspectorate said. This assessment runs directly counter to US charges that Iraq is not co- operating and is not prepared to document its programmes fully.
The technical report on nuclear capabilities was finished last weekend and sent off to headquarters to those who will draft the interim report, which will also include sections on chemical and biological capabilities. This is due to be submitted to the UN Security Council on January 27th.
However, the source observed: "The press and George W. \ don't seem to realise that negative findings are still findings. If the CIA says a building is a nuclear facility and you visit it and it is not a nuclear facility, then you 'found something', didn't you?".
He said the inspectors had carried out "dozens of such tasks and . . . have lots of findings . . . inspectors go places more than any other thing. With no reactor and centrifuge plant \ are down to trying to catch a machining operation or a computer in some lab doing centrifuge calculations.
"I doubt if [the Iraqis] are doing it at Tuwaitha [a major facility in the nuclear programme] or some other well-known place, if they are doing it at all."
The weapons inspectors' job, the source said, "involves convincing other people I am doing my job" which "is not that easy".
Meanwhile, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist dismissed the importance of the 3,000 pages of documents found last week at the home of Dr Faleh Hassan Hamza.
Dr Hamza, he said, "did small-scale laser \ enrichment research in the Eighties" and then "dabbled at the physics department in the Tuwaitha Research Centre itself". This was not part of the main Iraqi nuclear programme.
He quit his laser research in "1988 or so" since his work "was not yet viable to pursue on a production scale".
Dr Hamza "packed up" and went into other research.
The documents discovered at his home, the informant said, covered "little used research" and had been "mentioned in the October 1997 [International Nuclear Verification Office] report."
Reuters adds: Cyprus has agreed to a UN request that it host interviews between UN arms inspectors and Iraqi scientists, if needed, the Cypriot Foreign Minister, Mr Ioannis Cassoulides, said yesterday.
Asked if Cyprus had been formally asked to do so by UN officials, he said: "Yes. We were officially contacted by the UN last week on such a possibility."
Cyprus had agreed to provide facilities if UN inspectors brought Iraqis abroad for interview, he said. The island is already the forward logistics base of the UN weapons inspectors.