|
UN weapons inspectors bound for Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-21 02:49
Iraq's new government has asked U.N. inspectors to return to the country, the
head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Tuesday.
"The return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq is an urgent necessity; not to search
for weapons of mass destruction but to write the final report about the
nonexistence of (such) weapons ... in Iraq, which will enable the lifting of
sanctions," Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, told reporters in Cairo.
He said the invitation was issued by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
The inspectors will be sent in the next few days, ElBaradei said.
The inspectors, who will continue their work to ensure that Iraq adheres with
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, will return as soon as safety arrangements
have been made, agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said from the IAEA
headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
The inspectors would go to Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 12 miles south of
Baghdad, U.N. officials said Wednesday. The will conduct "an inventory
verification on the nuclear material remaining in Iraq," Fleming added.
Besides safeguards inspectors, the agency also had weapons inspectors in Iraq
who searched for nuclear weapons under a mandate from the U.N. Security Council.
Those inspectors left just before the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion in
March 2003.
The U.N. Security Council is to decide when the weapons inspectors can
return. The agency repeatedly has said it wants to send them back to finish
their job.
In Washington, State Department spokesman said the inspection in Iraq is
unrelated to the one which occurred during the months preceding the Iraq war.
He said the new inspection is part of a regular IAEA program that involves
all countries which have had safeguard agreements with the agency.
"One shouldn't confuse these inspections with the UNMOVIC, the prewar special
regime that applied to Iraq," Boucher said.
He added that there has been some media misinterpretation of ElBaradei's
announcement.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
