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Iraq 'considers arms inspections'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq is considering the return of United Nations weapons inspectors, an adviser to the country's President, Saddam Hussein, has told CNN.

"We have neither accepted nor rejected this," General Amer al-Sa'adi, Hussein's scientific adviser, told CNN in an interview, in marked contrast to Baghdad's previous categorical rejections of such a proposal.

Until recently, Iraqi officials said Iraq would never allow weapons inspectors to return after they left ahead of a bombing mission by United States and Britain in 1998, which followed accusations Iraq was not cooperating with the inspectors.

Sa'adi said the country was waiting for assurances from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Sa'adi is a member of the Iraqi delegation going to the U.N. headquarters in New York City on 1 May for three days of talks on the implementation of resolutions aimed at Iraq.

"We are largely going there to listen to what the secretary-general has to say in answer to questions from the last meeting," said Sa'adi, a former head of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission.

"These were wide-ranging questions which cover the relationship with the Security Council and we were very open what the plans are - how UNMOVIC is different from UNSCOM," he said.

UNMOVIC -- the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission -- is the new inspection regime created by the U.N. Security Council to ensure Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

It replaced UNSCOM -- the U.N. Special Commission -- after those weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq hours before the U.S.-led 1998 bombing. Iraq has not allowed the inspectors to return.

The head of the new inspection commission, Hans Blix, has said his teams would be more accountable to the U.N. than to the United States.

-- CNN's Jane Arraf contributed to this report



 
 
 
 







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