U.N. inspectors looking ahead to against-all-odds mission

VIENNA, Austria -- U.N. weapons inspectors gearing up for a return mission to Iraq will have to overcome daunting obstacles to shed light on Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, the chief nuclear-arms inspector said Thursday.

Four years after they were pulled out of Baghdad, the International Atomic Energy Agency's core team of 18 nuclear inspectors will rely heavily on new sleuthing technology if they're deployed to uncover evidence Saddam may have concealed, head inspector Jacques Baute told reporters.

Although the nuclear inspectors have been in and out of Iraq since 1991, enduring sandstorms, scorpions and subterfuge, the stakes have never been higher: Their findings could stoke -- or undermine -- the U.S. effort to galvanize global support for an invasion.

"We're like policemen trying to find one murderer among millions of people," Baute conceded. "The probability seems quite low. The group of inspectors is small, while the country is quite big."

"But if you use the right techniques, the chances become quite good," he added. "A nuclear program needs a large infrastructure. That's something that benefits us."

The Vienna-based IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, put its team on alert after Iraq's surprise announcement this week that it would accept the inspectors' return.

The agency says the team could leave as soon as the U.N. Security Council clears the mission and visa and travel arrangements are nailed down.

The inspectors come from a dozen countries -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, Ireland, Egypt, Austria, Canada, India, the Netherlands and the Philippines -- and will draw support and intelligence from other U.N. member states.

They include veteran physicists like Baute, who has spent years assessing Iraq's clandestine nuclear program. A separate New York-based team will head the hunt for biological and chemical agents.

U.N. weapons inspectors arrived in Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War under Security Council resolutions that tied Iraq's disarmament to the lifting of punishing U.N. sanctions slapped on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 amid Iraqi allegations that some inspectors were spying for the United States and countercharges that Iraq wasn't cooperating with the teams.

This time, the team will insist that Iraq keep its promise of unfettered access to suspect sites and cooperate fully with an inspection regime that Baute said would be "very intense."

"It is the only way that we can pursue inspections to ensure that we are able to check every corner, every building, see any person, any document," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "In that way we can be able to tell the world whether or not Iraq has indeed revived its nuclear program."

Saddam denied his country has any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in a speech read Thursday by his foreign minister at the United Nations, and said inspectors would have unfettered access.

Baute said the inspectors would be relying on new technology, powerful software and a support staff of hundreds of highly skilled analysts in their search for banned materials.