Inspectors hope to have reviewed arms declaration by week's end

UNITED NATIONS -- Weapons inspectors could complete a review of Iraq's arms declaration by the end of the week and present some of that material to Security Council members who haven't received copies of the complete dossier, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- were each conducting their own analyses of the 12,000-page declaration. Blix said he hoped the five permanent council members, which got copies of the declaration Monday, could also provide preliminary assessments by the end of the week.

"I told the council we hope that we have been through the main part of the document, about 3,000 pages, by Friday," Blix told reporters. "The bottleneck is translation."

"In the best case, by Monday we will be able to have a working version of the main part that we can share with all the members of the council. What we are now dealing with is only to take out of the declaration things that could be risky from the point of view of proliferation," he said.

Several council members, including Syria, Mexico and Norway are unhappy about a deal Washington cut late Sunday to keep complete copies of the declaration out of the hands of the council's 10 non-permanent members.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen said it was wrong to treat some members as "B-nations."