Russia rebuffed in effort to reduce Iraqi nuclear inspections

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Russian diplomats at the United Nations backed away Wednesday from an attempt to scale back nuclear inspections in Iraq in the face of strong objections from the United States.

Citing Iraqi progress in accounting for its nuclear assets, the Russians had wanted to shift from regular inspections of Iraqi sites to less intrusive monitoring and verification visits. But they decided not to force a showdown on the issue in the Security Council in the wake of recent findings that Iraq had once deployed nerve gas on missiles.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov expressed disappointment and said remaining questions about Iraq's nuclear capabilities "could be handled easily and entirely" through monitoring rather than inspections.

"This leaves the thorny and controversial issue of ongoing monitoring for a later stage," Lavrov said.

But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson argued against relaxing the nuclear inspection regime, saying, "We don't think Iraq needs to be rewarded for inaction, for non-cooperation."

The International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report on Iraq's nuclear program said that inspectors had found no evidence that the Iraqis were trying to maintain their nuclear program. However, the IAEA said its inspectors could not certify that no such evidence existed -- and that Iraq may very well be hiding nuclear information and technology.

Under the terms that ended the Gulf War, Iraq must destroy all weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Until the Security Council is satisfied Iraq has done so, international sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 will remain in place.

Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon said the latest IAEA report proves that Iraq has taken the steps the international community demanded in relation to its nuclear program.

"We think the whole nuclear file has been done a long time ago," he said.