Annan says Iraq inspections to go on until Security Council decides otherwise

United Nations inspectors will carry on with their work until the Security Council decides otherwise, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday in Rome, stressing that there is no time limit in the Council's resolutions and that a debate is going on in the 15-nation body about how much more time is needed.

"If the Council were to decide that there had been a material breach and that serious consequences were to follow and to determine that, the inspectors may have to suspend or stop their work," the Secretary-General said to reporters following his meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. "Until that judgment is made, they will have to go on."