Iraq says UN can question hundreds of scientists

Iraq has given its first, tentative approval for weapons scientists to leave the country to be interviewed, a vital US demand if the war that seems increasingly inevitable is to be averted.

As United Nations inspections began their second month of hunting for weapons of mass destruction yesterday, Baghdad said that it would provide the UN tomorrow with a list of "hundreds" of scientists, technicians and experts who have worked on the country's biological, chemical, missile and nuclear programmes.

Meanwhile, the US ratcheted up the pressure on Saddam Hussein by announcing that it had ordered two aircraft carriers and two amphibious assault vessels to prepare to travel to the seas off Iraq. The ships and their escort of cruisers, destroyers, strike aircraft, submarines and 2,500 marines, would bring a powerful military force to the region.

British and American warplanes are bombing Iraqi military command and communication targets in the south of the country after Iraq shot down a US reconnaissance drone on Monday. The Iraqi government said three civilians died and 16 were wounded in the air strikes, which it claimed also struck a mosque.

Iraq's offer to allow its scientists to leave the country is unlikely to be taken at face value by the UN or the US. The Iraqi announcement said it would be up to individuals to accept it "on a personal basis" but seemed to indicate they should not comply, saying it "was not necessary" for them to travel abroad.

The tactics appear similar to those Iraq adopted for the earlier demand under Security Council resolution 1441 for an inventory of its suspected weapons programmes, when it supplied a declaration running to 12,000 pages; to flood the UN with a mass of information but with no guarantee that the key personnel in any clandestine activities would be among the names listed.

There was no indication yesterday that the scientists' families would be allowed out of Iraq with them to avoid reprisals by President Saddam's regime, as stipulated by resolution 1441.

The latest sites visited by the inspectors, who are to deliver their first detailed report on 27 January, include an engineering factory that has been linked to Iraq's military industrialisation commission, as well as Al-Assriya Company, an old-established Baghdad factory that produces the local spirit, arak.

But since the inspectors have apparently not yet unearthed much of great significance, the crunch looks likely to come over the scientists. If they are not made available, Washington has made clear, Baghdad will again be in "material breach" of its obligations, the acknowledged trigger for military action.

The US ­ though no other country, not even its closest ally Britain ­ has already declared Iraq in breach for the failure of the weapons inventory to account for some weapons stocks and equipment found before UN inspectors left in December 1998. Since then, much of the evidence purportedly amassed by the British and Americans is believed to have come from Iraqi defectors. The chief Iraqi official liaising with the inspectors says his government would not prevent scientists from travelling abroad for interviews. But he left little doubt that he thought they should refuse to go. "It's up to them. You can ask the scientists one by one," General Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the national monitoring directorate, said. "I'm one of them. I can answer you on my case only ­ I will not go."

He insisted there was no need for the scientists to leave Iraq. But the issue was "a personal one, and the directorate cannot force anyone to do this because everyone is free to do what he wants." The Iraqi authorities said one scientist, Kathim Jamil, an expert in aluminium tubes working on missiles for Iraq's military industrialisation commission, had already been interviewed by UN expertsinside the country and among witnesses.

In central Iraq, militia units are staging exercises to prepare to defend the country against an American-led invasion. The government has announced it will help civilians stockpile food by supplying two months of rations at a time instead of one.