ElBaradei: Inspectors need six months
No substitute for full Iraqi cooperation, IAEA chief says
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Mohamed ElBaradei asks the Security Council for more time to finish nuclear weapons inspections before any military action is taken against Iraq.
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Weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, addresses the U.N. Security Council. (February 14)
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UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- One of the heads of the U.N.'s nuclear weapons inspectors in Iraq said Friday that his teams will need "around six months" to complete their work, given the current level of cooperation by Iraqi officials.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said on CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports" that inspectors "are getting some reasonable cooperation on the part of Iraq."
"We're still making steady progress in the nuclear file. We're still investigating a number of issues -- aluminum tubes -- that have to do with a possible program for enriching uranium. We're still investigating whether Iraq, in fact, tried to import uranium from an African country. So we are moving forward."
On Friday, ElBaradei and Hans Blix, the head of the U.N.'s inspection program for biological and chemical weapons, issued a report to the Security Council in which they said Iraq had increased its level of cooperation -- but had still not fully accounted for its weapons of mass destruction.
"My argument today ... is we are in mid-course," he said. "Give me the time to complete my task before you think of other alternatives."
ElBaradei also said that a French proposal to increase the number of inspectors would help the process, though he said it would be "no substitute for full and active Iraqi cooperation."
"We need to build capacity in many areas," ElBaradei said. "We probably need people to freeze a site when we do an inspection. We probably need more inspectors to do simultaneous inspections at different sites at the same time. We probably need some customs experts to control any imports from outside."
But he also said that without full Iraqi cooperation to complement stepped-up inspections, "The process is very slow."
ElBaradei also said that it is "understood" among Security Council members that weapons inspectors will be evacuated from Iraq before any military action begins.
