First UN Group of Weapons Inspectors Arrive in Iraq

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 26, 2002

First UN Group of Weapons Inspectors Arrive in Iraq

The first working group of UN weapons inspectors arrived in Baghdad Monday afternoon to resume the searching for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction after a four-year suspension.

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The first working group of UN weapons inspectors arrived in Baghdad Monday afternoon to resume the searching for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction after a four-year suspension.

Among the inspectors, six are from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the remaining 12 others from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

They touched down at the Saddam International Airport on a chartered C-130 Hercules cargo plane from UN rear base in Larnaca, a southern coastal town of Cyprus, earlier in the day.

The inspection group, the first back in Iraq since UN arms inspectors withdrew in 1998, is expected to start a new round of searches for prohibited weapons on Wednesday.

An advance team of about two dozen supporting logistics experts have been in Baghdad to reopen offices since their significant return to Iraq on Nov. 18.

Baghdad's cooperation with the UN inspectors will be key to ensure success of the UN mission and peace in the region, accordingto Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna based IAEA.

"If Iraq refuses to engage in cooperation with the inspectors, the talk about war will come again," ElBaradei told reporters Monday in Cairo after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Iraq's first real test will come on Dec. 8, when it will be obliged by UN Security Council Resolution 1441 to submit a full account of its weapons programs, although it insists it has no biological, chemical or nuclear arms.

"Further material breach" of Iraq's obligations would incur "serious consequences," the UN document adopted on Nov. 8 warned.

By Jan. 27, the inspectors must give their first report to the UN Security Council.

Iraq has been under sweeping UN sanctions since its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the embargo will not be lifted until the UN has verified that Iraq has eliminated all of its weapons of mass destruction and means of launch them.

Continuous spats about alleged espionage activities between Iraqand the UN arms inspectors, who were commissioned to verify that Iraq has been disarmed, led to crisis in 1997 and 1998, and eventually the air war against Baghdad on Dec. 17-19, 1998.

The inspectors have since been barred from entering Iraq again.

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