UN inspectors challenge Iraqi ban on Americans
Iraq, Politics, 11/4/1997

Defying Iraq's order for American arms inspectors to leave the country, the United Nations decided to resume field operations in which 10 US citizens in Baghdad would participate. But today Iraq turned away a second UN weapons inspection team that contained Americans.

Iraq did the same yesterday, and still says that it wants all American members of the inspection team out of the country by Wednesday.

Nizar Hamdoun, Iraq's ambassador to the UN, stated that US officials within the UN mission are deliberately proceeding slowly in their work in order to slow the removal of sanctions against Iraq.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to shoot down American high-altitude U-2 spy planes. The US said that the surveillance planes are expected to continue to fly regular missions over Iraq.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has sent a three-member delegation to try to persuade Iraq not to enforce the Wednesday deadline. The delegation is to deliver a letter to the Iraqi government, and Annan is optimistic that the mission will succeed. The US stressed that the mission of the delegation is to deliver a message to Iraq and not to negotiate.

Diplomats said that Richard Butler, head of the U.N special commission (Unscom) in charge of dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, needed to know before the Wednesday deadline set by Iraq to expel the Americans how Baghdad would be carrying out its threat, Al Wafd daily said today.

There is little appetite to support the US's unilateral position that is taken against Iraq in the Arab world and the Gulf countries with regard to taking military action over this dispute.

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