Butler heads to Iraq, after US says no to dialogue with Baghdad

Chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler prepares to meet in Vienna on Friday with International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohammed el-Baradei; the head of the IAEA's action committee on Iraq, Gary Dillon; and other officials before heading to Iraq.

Once in Iraq, Butler will meet with Jayantha Dhanapala, in charge of inspecting Iraqi presidential sites, whose teams are about to begin work.

This comes after Assistant US Secretary of State Martin Indyk, who paid a visit earlier this week to the Morocco, said on Monday that Washington does not want talks with Baghdad, "We have no interest in a dialogue with Iraq. As we have tried to make clear throughout this crisis, these are issues between Iraq and the United Nations, not between Iraq and the United States." The US "look[s] forward to the day when we can work with an alternative government in Iraq," he said.

Indyk said that Saddam Hussein, through misuse of oil-for-food funds is responsible for the suffering in Iraq, saying, "The United States has never sought to inflict pain on the Iraqi people." He said that international decisions did not prevent Iraq from importing medicine and food for the Iraqi nation.

He commented on the aims of the February Iraq-UN agreement, "The agreement that Secretary General Kofi Annan negotiated was an agreement designed to help bring Iraq into compliance with the requirements of the Security Council resolutions. It was an agreement that would enable UNSCOM, the UN Special Commission, to do its job of inspections anywhere, at any time, by the methods of its choosing. It was not an agreement to rehabilitate Saddam Hussein."