from Gerri Haines Physicians for Social Responsibility, f.
January 31, 2002
Iraq Co - Operated with Nuclear Inspection - - IAEA
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:18 p.m. ET
AMMAN (Reuters) - The head of a team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA said on Thursday Baghdad had co-operated fully with its routine annual inspection in Iraq.
The IAEA mission was completed on Wednesday, one day after President Bush accused Baghdad of developing weapons of mass destruction.
The International Atomic Energy Agency team arrived in Jordan from Baghdad where it had carried out the five-day mission in which it inspected several undisclosed sites.
Anrzey Pietruzewski, head of the team, told reporters in Amman the mission went smoothly.
``During our inspection, representatives from the Iraqi Atomic Energy commission were present for the whole time and all help that is necessary to perform the inspections was provided by Iraqi authorities,'' he said.
Pietruzewski said a statement about the results of the inspection would be made to the Iraqi authorities.
The inspection by the Vienna-based IAEA, a U.N. agency that monitors the peaceful use of nuclear power worldwide, was intended to guard against any diversion of nuclear material to a military program.
It was not connected to more intrusive U.N. inspections in Iraq conducted prior to 1998 under a Security Council resolution ordering Baghdad to eliminate all its weapons of mass destruction following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Those U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998 just before a U.S.-British bombing blitz and Iraq has refused to allow them back since.
Bush vowed on Tuesday to prevent ``terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.'' He singled out Iraq, Iran and North Korea by name.
Iraq dismissed Bush's comments as ``stupid and improper,'' saying the U.S. leader was laying the groundwork for another U.S. assault on Iraq, whose troops were driven from Kuwait in 1991 by a U.S.-led coalition.
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