World News Iraq claims 'spies' among inspectors

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A surprise U.N. inspection of one of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's palaces has ignited the first flare-up in the new rounds of weapons inspections in Iraq.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan accused U.N. inspectors Dec. 4 of being "spies" for the United States and Israel, warning that they were beginning to look like their predecessors of the 1990s, who Iraq had accused of espionage.

He also claimed that inspectors staged the brief Dec. 3 intrusion into the al-Sajoud presidential palace in Baghdad to provoke the Iraqis into refusing them entrance - something he said would be interpreted as a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution that mandated the inspections, and therefore a cause for war.

The U.N. insisted its inspectors were independent.

Responding to Iraqi protests over the palace inspection, a U.N. official said the inspectors are taking the right approach - navigating between Iraqi complaints and U.S. pressure for more "severe" inspections.

The inspections team leader, Demetrius Perricos, said that they were "getting results."

Among other things, he reported that on a five-hour inspection of a desert installation Dec. 3, his experts secured a dozen Iraqi artillery shells - previously known to be there - that were loaded with a powerful chemical weapon, the agent for mustard gas. It was the first report of such armaments to be traced and controlled in the week-old round of new inspections.

イラク副大統領、査察官を非難

国連によるイラクの大量破壊兵器査察が、抜き打ちで行なわれた。

Shukan ST: Dec. 13, 2002

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