UN admits tipping off Iraq for arms inspection
DEC 1, 2002
BAGHDAD -- Serious doubts surfaced over the surprise nature of new arms inspections in Iraq when a United Nations spokesman admitted the head of a suspected weapons site had been given advance warning of the visit by the UN experts to his facility on Saturday.
'He was informed the day before, on Friday, that the team was coming to remove an air sampler and install a new one,' UN spokesman Hiro Ueki told AFP by phone shortly after denying at a press briefing that the UN had tipped off the Iraqis.
'That is all there is to it,' the spokesman added in an apparent bid to quash a possible controversy about whether UN inspections of suspected weapons sites, which resumed on Nov 27 were really on no-notice basis.
Reporters had pressed Mr Ueki earlier about remarks by Iraqi official Hussein Hammudeh who told journalists he had prior notice of a visit to his facility by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts.
Mr Ueki had told the press briefing that 'the inspectors arrive unannounced' and that the UN does 'not notify Iraqis' of planned visits.
But he added that it was not surprising if officials at specific sites expected visits since such sites had been marked for inspection by the former UN experts who pulled out of the country in 1998 ahead of US and British air strikes on Iraq.
Later to explain his apparent flip-flop, Mr Ueki issued a statement elaborating on what he told AFP. He defended the advance notice given to Iraq as purely a matter of logistics, but added the UN had also given prior notice to a second inspection site.
He said: 'Um al-Maarik Company, which the IAEA team visited on Nov 30, was notified by the IAEA team in advance that two of their technicians would review the status of the remaining video surveillance.
'Al-Qa Qaa Company, which the IAEA team visited, was also requested on Thursday afternoon to provide assistance to facilitate removal of sampler.
'This type of advance notification is sometimes given to facilitate their work on monitoring equipment. It happened to the above two cases. Except for these types of cases, our inspection teams do not provide advance warning to the Iraqis, as we have emphasised time and again.' -- AFP
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