Baghdad: UN inspectors have completed their work

Baghdad on Monday asserted that the UN inspection team in charge of banned weapons in Iraq had "completed" its mission in Iraq in accordance to the UN security council resolutions.

The Iraqi minister of information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf described the Iraqi opposition members who recently visited the White House as "pay men and a failed American production." In a statement to the al-Jazeera TV station in Qatar, al-Sahaf said "the inspection team have completed their work" before they had left Iraq four years ago, adding that "work in the framework of the UN concerning section C of resolution 687, to what is called the banned weapons, was completed." The UN resolution 687 which was adopted by the UN on April 3, 1991 following the Gulf war set the arrangements to dismantle the Iraqi weapons which makes it obligatory for Iraq to destroy all its mass destructive weapons under an international supervision.

Al-Sahaf stressed that the allegations by the US and the UN that Iraq disarmament operations has not been completed "can be answered and proved," noting that "there are several ways and means to prove that, and they know that."

On August 2, Iraq extended an invitation to the UN inspectors chief Hans Blix to hold talks for a likely resumption of the inspection operations. Three days later, Baghdad called on the US Congress to send an investigation team in order to shed light on the issue of mass destruction weapons. The US had refused the two calls.

However, in the first Iraqi reply to the activity of the Iraqi opposition activity in Washington, al-Sahaf said "Those pay men ( the opposition) are American production and they are mere failed American production." Al-Sahaf stressed that the "meetings of the Iraqi opposition in Washington is a silly game revealing the bankruptcy of the American position and policy, not only in Iraq, but in the world as a whole." Washington considered al-Sahaf's statements as expressing bad intention. The spokesman for the US state department said that there is "nothing new" in these Iraqi statements.