Baghdad, Jan 21: The Baghdad government will expand its cooperation with UN weapons inspectors under a new agreement worked out in two days of talks, but it's sure the US military will attack Iraq anyway, Iraqi vice president said today. "It is possible any minute, any second that while the inspectors are still here, the aggression will take place," Taha Yassin Ramadan said.
The United States, which does not believe Iraq's claim it has no more biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, has threatened war against Iraq if it fails to disarm voluntarily.
In the negotiations on Sunday and yesterday, Iraq gave ground to international arms controllers on procedural snares in the two-month-old UN monitoring regime. But it will be left to teams of UN and Iraqi experts, in the months to come, to work out more complex issues of accounting for old stocks of doomsday weapons.
The talks led by chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the UN nuclear agency, were a prelude to a crucial report they must make to the UN Security Council on Monday, on progress made in the UN effort to ensure Iraq no longer has banned weapons programmes.
If the Council judges Iraq's cooperation to be poor, that could set the stage for finding the Baghdad government in "material breach" of UN edicts, and for a move toward military action against it.
Vice president Ramadan, speaking with reporters, said Washington wants to "create the idea that Iraq isn't cooperating," in order to accuse it of a material breach. Bureau Report