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Inspectors accept Iraq invitationIraqi official rules out meeting with Saddam
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.N. chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei have accepted Iraq's invitation to return to Baghdad on February 8 for a new round of talks with Iraqi officials. "We have accepted this invitation to go to Baghdad with the clear expectation of action that needs to be taken by Iraq prior to the visit," IAEA spokeswomn Melissa Fleming said Sunday. The two chief weapons inspectors listed those actions -- which included the acceptance of U-2 surveillance flights, private interviews for scientists, and the adoption of national legislation that would ban weapons of mass destruction -- in a letter delivered early Saturday to the Iraqi Ambassador at the United Nations, she said. Fleming said the letter would be used to judge whether the meeting was successful, but was not a list of conditions for the talks. "We are not requiring formal confirmation of the expectations outlined in the letter," Flemming said. She said inspectors would not speculate on what they would do if Iraq rejects the actions. Gen. Hussam Amin of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, said: "It was our suggestion that Blix and ElBaradei would go back to iraq to show our willingness to cooperate and to enter into negotiations in Baghdad. "We shall do our best to make the visit successful." He said the inspections conducted, so far, "show and indicate that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction." However, the Bush Administration dismissed the notion that any visit by the chief weapons inspectors to Iraq would be useful. "The President has been clear," a senior administration official said Sunday. "This is no longer a matter of talking, but of Iraq disarming." Deputy Iraqi Prime Minister Tariq Aziz confirmed Saturday that Blix and ElBaradei had accepted the Iraqi invitation. He would not give any other details of the upcoming meeting, except to say there was absolutely no chance the inspectors would meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, U.N. weapons insectors visited several sites Sunday as part of their mission to verify that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Ministry of Information listed these sites: • Al Samoud Company in Abu Ghreib west of Baghdad. • Al Meelad Company, part of the state-owned Al Harith Company, north of Baghdad. • Al Qa'qaa Co. in Yousifiya, south of Baghdad. • Irrigation warehouses in the Al Wahda district in Mosul. • Al Nu'man Company south of Baghdad. Teams also were headed toward Shahraban near the border with Iran, to Ba'qouba east of Baghdad and to Al Qa'im west of Baghdad, near the Syrian border. Also Sunday, Coalition aircraft dropped 420,000 informational leaflets in southern Iraq, according to the U.S. Central Command, bringing the total number of leaflets dropped in recent days to more than one million. The leaflets were dropped at several locations near Al Hayy, which is about 75 miles southeast of Baghdad. The messages warned Iraqis that military fiber optic sites had been targeted for destruction and that repairing them would put their lives in danger. They also warned Iraqis to avoid areas occupied by military forces and gave the frequencies for coalition radio broadcasts. On Saturday, Iraqi Vice Pres Taha Yassin Ramadan told a German news magazine that Iraq is prepared to deploy "thousands of suicide attackers" against the United States once any U.S. bombing of Iraq starts. "We don't have long distance missiles or many bombers, but we will deploy thousands of suicide attackers ... the martyrs," Ramadan said in an interview published Saturday on the Web site of Der Spiegel, the weekly news magazine. "Those are our new weapons and they will not only be deployed within Iraq. ... The Arab people will stand by the people of Iraq in the fight for its independence and freedom. This will be a fire in the whole region." (Full story) -- CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson and U.N. Producer Liz Neisloss contributed to this report. CNN.com's Iraq Tracker has further developments in the standoff with Iraq.
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