U.S. Unswayed by Inspectors' Report
Security Council Remains Divided on Iraqi Issue

The United States urged reluctant members of the U.N. Security Council to consider "serious consequences" against Iraq following a mixed verdict Friday from top U.N. weapons inspectors.

After 11 weeks of searching, the chief inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction to date, but they urged Iraq to be more cooperative.

Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said they were still investigating and had not ruled out the possibility that Iraq does possess chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

After the presentations, council members appeared to maintain their positions - with France, China, and Russia calling for more time and the United States, Britain, and Spain saying Iraq was not complying with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the progress that Blix and ElBaradei cited was simply "process" and not substance and said that Iraq's recent steps "are all tricks that are being played on us".

"What we need is not more inspections, what we need is not more immediate access, what we need is immediate, active, unconditional, full cooperation on the part of Iraq. What we need is for Iraq to disarm", Powell said.

Powell said the Security Council should consider authorizing the "serious consequences" called for in the resolution. "The threat of force must remain... We cannot allow this process to be endlessly strung out as Iraq is doing right now", Powell said.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that it was clear that inspections were working and that there was not yet any justification for using force against Iraq. "Inspections are producing results... The option of inspections has not been taken to the end", de Villepin said. "The use of force would be so fraught with risk for people, for the region and for international stability that it should only be envisioned as a last resort."

De Villepin called for a March 14 meeting to hear again from the inspectors.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov also called for more time.

Mohammed Aldouri, the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, said that his country has cooperated with inspectors to prove that it did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. "An empty hand has nothing to give. You cannot give what you don't have. If we do not possess such weapons, how can we disarm ourselves of such weapons? Indeed, how can they be disarmed when they don't exist?" Aldouri asked the council.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who was in Rome, Italy, for a meeting with Pope John Paul II, said: "The outlaw here is America, not Iraq."

President Bush did not discuss the Security Council meeting directly during a counterterrorism speech Friday at FBI headquarters in Washington, but he said Saddam Hussein would be disarmed "one way or another". "When I speak about the war on terror, I not only talk about al Qaeda, I talk about Iraq because after all Saddam Hussein has got weapons of mass destruction and he has used them", Bush said. "Saddam Hussein is used to deceiving the world, and he continues to do so. Saddam Hussein has got ties to terrorist networks. Saddam Hussein is a danger."

Progress Reported, But Questions Remain

Blix said perhaps the most important problem facing the council is determining what happened to stores of anthrax, deadly VX nerve agent, and long-range missiles that Iraq previously was known to have. Iraq has not provided adequate material to prove what happened to them, he said. It is Baghdad's responsibility - "not the task of inspectors" - to find such evidence, he said.

Blix said one document suggests that "some 1,000 tons of chemical agent were unaccounted for", but Baghdad has begun to provide more information that could help lead to answers, he added. "One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded", Blix said. "If they exist, they should be presented for destruction."

He said that Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missile exceeded the range of 93 miles (150 kilometers) allowed by U.N. resolutions. Iraqi officials have said the missile did not yet have a guidance system, which would reduce its range. Blix also said a small number of empty chemical munitions had been found, "which should have been declared and destroyed."

ElBaradei argued the inspections can succeed even without complete cooperation from Baghdad - contradicting what U.S., British, and other officials have said. "It is possible, particularly with an intrusive verification system, to assess the presence or absence of a nuclear weapon program in a state, even without the full cooperation of the inspected states", he said.

He said that Iraq has provided immediate access to all inspection locations and that four Iraqi scientists have been interviewed in private. "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear activities in Iraq", ElBaradei said, adding that there are "a number of issues under investigation, and we're not in a position to reach a conclusion about them".

For example, he said, while Iraq has not imported uranium in recent years, it has attempted to procure it - though he added that it was not clear what such stores, if they exist, might be used for.

Blix also questioned Powell's argument, presented to the council last week, that Iraq has prohibited weapons or is attempting to hide anything. Referring to satellite images that Powell said showed Iraq removing items - presumably incriminating evidence - from a site before inspectors arrived, Blix said that "the reported movement could just as easily have been routine movement".