Iraq allows journalists to go inside suspect plant

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Iraqi government took reporters on a tour of what it said was an insecticide plant that had been wrongly stamped a weapons factory, continuing a diplomatic and public relations campaign to combat allegations it is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

The United Nations has said the plant is suspect, and wants trained inspectors to have full access to any site it deems suspicious.

U.S. officials, who accuse Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of rebuilding the facilities, are unlikely to be swayed by events like Wednesday's tour for reporters. The tour came amid increased speculation that the United States will attack Iraq.

Reporters were taken to a site at Falluja, 65 miles west of Baghdad. There, they were shown a plant floor littered with dusty barrels and sacks marked as containing agricultural pesticides. Scores of workers were busy fixing machines or checking pesticides.

"The plant is producing domestic insecticides and agricultural pesticides and it has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction," plant manager Haidar Hassan said.

In New York on Wednesday, the spokesman for the U.N. weapons inspection agency, Ewen Buchanan, said the United Nations monitored more than one site at Falluja from about 1994 to 1998, when the inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes. It was unclear whether reporters were taken to any of those sites Wednesday.

Iraq has barred U.N. weapon inspectors since 1998. Three rounds of talks between the United Nations and Iraq this year failed to persuade Baghdad to readmit inspectors.

U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs have been dismantled along with the long-range missiles to deliver them.

An expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Jean Pascal Zanders, said Wednesday that Falluja was "a name that has recurred time and time again in the context of chemical weapons in Iraq."

Influencing world opinion

Zanders said taking journalists to alleged weapons sites was "an exercise in trying to influence world opinion, possibly to avert U.S. military action."

"With all due respect, I don't think journalists would be the people to make a snap judgment as to whether a facility is designed and equipped for purposes prohibited by U.N. resolutions on chemical and biological weapons," said Zanders, who was reached by telephone.

He added that much of the equipment for producing chemical and biological weapons can have legitimate purposes. To find out what is really going on, requires "particularly intrusive inspections, not just to sites designated by the Iraqi authorities," Zanders said.

On similar tours earlier this month, Iraqi authorities took reporters to what appeared to be a livestock vaccination laboratory and a complex of food warehouses.

Baghdad also dispatched senior officials this week to Syria and China, the latter a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Iraq's neighbors have expressed fears a U.S. strike would further destabilize the region and have urged Iraq to allow in weapons inspectors to defuse the crisis.

In Syria Wednesday, the visiting king of Bahrain, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, reiterated his country's opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq -- a position shared by Syria. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said Sheik Hamad urged Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions and spare the region "further tensions and suffering."

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri that Iraq should implement Security Council resolutions. However, Tang said use of force against Iraq wouldn't solve its problems with the United States and the United Nations.