White House: No Breaks For Saddam

Spokesman Doubts Cooperation With Inspectors Is Genuine

(CBS)  The White House Wednesday said that Iraq's record of defiance made President Bush skeptical of Saddam Hussein's willingness to cooperate with a new round of weapons inspections.

"Iraq does not deserve a break," spokesman Ari Fleischer said. CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports the White House assessment is based on Saddam's past actions, and not its performance in weapons inspections so far.

Those inspections continued Wednesday. U.N. monitors spent five hours inspecting a desert factory that was once the heart of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons industries.

A second team, meanwhile, visited the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex to check on new construction and other changes since the last inspection in 1998, according to Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. nuclear control agency in Vienna, Austria.

The inspectors who drove to the desert chemical weapons factory were making a return visit to check that Iraq had not resumed production at the site.

In the late 1990s, U.N. inspectors demolished the al-Muthanna State Establishment, in wastelands 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, after finding it had been key to Iraq's production of some of the deadliest chemical weapons known: mustard gas, tabun, sarin and VX nerve agent.

The desert center operated under the name of Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production, but the Iraqis finally admitted to the U.N. monitors that al-Muthanna produced 4,000 tons of chemical warfare agent per year.

Al-Muthanna also became instrumental in the development of biological agents, apparently including anthrax.

After the 1991 war, the facility's equipment and material were destroyed under the supervision of U.N. inspectors in the late 1990s.

Inspectors left al-Muthanna without speaking to journalists waiting at the gate. However, an Iraqi liaison officer, Raad Manhal, said the arms experts had searched for signs of resumed production at the site, and "found no change."

The Al-Tuwaitha site, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, has long been an issue of international concern. The site was bombed by Israeli warplanes in 1981 and again by the Americans in the Gulf War 10 years later. Recent satellite photos have spotted new construction.

Wednesday's searches came at the end of the first week of renewed inspections under a U.N. Security Council mandate for Iraq to shut down any continuing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.

So far, the inspectors have reported the Iraqis to be cooperative, but Mr. Bush said Monday that early signs from Baghdad "are not encouraging."

In a more upbeat assessment, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters while en route to Colombia that the inspection process is "off to a pretty good start" and noted the inspectors have been allowed to visit sites thus far without Iraqi interference.

"I'm not prepared to say the inspections are working," Powell said. "They're not up to strength and they're not up to speed yet."

The next major test for the Iraqis comes this week when Baghdad is to submit a report detailing its chemical, biological and nuclear programs, including those it says are for peaceful purposes. The report is due Sunday, but Fleming, the U.N. nuclear control spokeswoman, said it was expected to be submitted to the U.N. in Baghdad on Saturday.

Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer, told reporters Tuesday that the Iraqi declaration "will include new elements, but those new elements don't mean that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

"Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," Amin said.

The Bush administration maintains that Iraq still has such weapons and has threatened war if Baghdad does not voluntarily surrender them.

Elsewhere, U.S. war planes bombed an Iraqi air defense site in the northern "no-fly" zone about 15 miles from the city of Mosul, U.S. officials said. The attack came after the Iraqis fired on U.S. jets patrolling the area, the officials said.

Meanwhile, fighting erupted in Iraq's northern Kurdish enclave between Islamic militants believed allied with al Qaeda and Kurdish militia. About 20 Kurds were injured or killed in the artillery assault.