Iraq Crisis: Saddam's palaces no larger than the Queen's

EIGHT Iraqi palaces which collectively cover an area of more than 70 square kilometres are set to be the battlegrounds of the next Gulf conflict.

Containing in excess of 1,500 buildings, they are believed to provide an infinite number of hiding places for the precursors of chemical and biological weapons or the mobile launchers used to propel Scud-type missiles.

For nearly four months, inspectors from the UN Special Commission (Unscom) on Iraq have tried to gain entry to the palaces. But Iraq has consistently blocked access to what it calls "sovereign sites", and has even moved civilians into some of the compounds to form "human shields" against air- strikes.

Three of the palaces are in Baghdad itself, with one taking up four square kilometres of the city centre and including several hundred buildings.

Other palaces are located at Basra in southern Iraq and at Mosul in the north. The remaining three sites are in the Salahadin region, north of Baghdad, with two palaces in Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit and another built on a lake at Maqar-el-Tharthar.

The latter is said by one former worker to be "like the palaces in stories of Sinbad and Arabian Nights" and around five times as big as the White House in Washington.

An Unscom spokesman said yesterday: "We are not just talking about a marble edifice. These sites have warehouses, garages, barracks, houses and industrial facilities."

A team of Unscom surveyors in Iraq is making an assessment of the scale and significance of the eight sites for Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, ahead of his peace mission to Iraq tomorrow.

A senior British military source said last week that one Iraqi palace alone covered an area of nearly 25 square kilometres. It would, he said, cover an area stretching from Hyde Park to Wapping, in east London, and from Regents Park, south to Streatham.

"These are not palaces like Buckingham Palace or Balmoral," he said. "They are amazingly opulent with artificial lakes and swimming pools. They have spent a gigantic amount of money on them."

The Ministry of Defence yesterday issued a drawing of the Abu Rakash palace, 60km north of President Saddam's home city of Tikrit. Within the site, which is approximately 6km by 4km, are four palaces, each larger than Buckingham Palace.

However, although Buckingham Palace is only 0.16 sq km, other British royal estates are far larger than the Iraqi palaces. Sandringham is more than 82 sq km, while Balmoral extends over 202 sq km.

Since the last Gulf conflict, President Saddam has spent an estimated pounds 1bn on the eight palace sites and a further 70 presidential sites. At Tikrit, one of the palaces consists of 13 marble buildings interlinked around an artificial lake created by diverting the waters of the river Tigris.

President Saddam's palace building programme began well before the Gulf war. A Northern Ireland construction company spoke yesterday of how it was involved in the building of the administrative palace on the banks of the Tigris in Baghdad, which was finished in 1991.

Ivan McCabrey, managing director of Mivan of Co Antrim, said that precious hardwoods and tons of marble were imported from all around the world. The palace had 110 bullet-proof windows, each weighing about one and a half tons. "Before he went to war with Kuwait, Saddam was considered a good guy," said Mr McCabrey.