Iraq Inspectors Pay Palace Visit

U.N. arms experts spent four hours searching a presidential palace in the heart of the Iraqi capital Wednesday, making their second visit to a residence of President Saddam Hussein since inspections resumed last year.

The inspectors, who are seeking weapons of mass destruction, visited a complex in the al-Karadah district known popularly as the Old Palace. It was not immediately known if Saddam was in the palace, which overlooks the Tigris river.

Journalists, who were kept outside by Iraqi security officers, peered through the black and white gates to see U.N. and Iraqi vehicles parked on a long road lined by palm trees. They could not see the palace, which was built after the fall of the monarchy in 1958, bombed twice during 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequently repaired.

The inspectors left without speaking to reporters, but palace official Abu Mohammed Issawi said they had searched residential buildings and the offices of a war veterans agency.

U.N. inspectors last visited a presidential palace, the al-Sajoud in Baghdad, on Dec. 3. The Iraqis did not block the visit, but complained that it was unnecessary.

Iraq strongly resisted searches of presidential grounds under a different U.N. inspection regime during the 1990s, leading to an agreement whereby such visits could take place only with notice and an escort of foreign diplomats.

However, a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in November explicitly gives the inspectors the right to visit any site in Iraqi at any time and without warning.

The palace visit came a day after the chief U.N. arms inspector and President Bush projected starkly different timelines for inspectors' work.

Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday that the inspectors would need months to finish their search for Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, long-range missiles, and the programs that produced them.

However, the president indicated the inspectors did not have that much time.

"Time is running out for him," Mr. Bush said of Saddam. He told White House reporters Tuesday he had not seen any evidence the Iraqi president was disarming after more than 10 years of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"He must disarm," Mr. Bush said. "I'm sick and tired of games and deceptions. And that's my view of timetables."

But Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he saw no reason for an invasion of Iraq as U.N. weapons inspectors were "just getting up to full speed." And a top European Union official, Chris Patten, warned that Mr. Bush will have trouble persuading Europeans to help pay for the possible reconstruction of Iraq if he invades the country without United Nations support.

Since inspections resumed in November, they are not known to have discovered any evidence to support U.S. allegations that Saddam has hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction. But the Iraqi declaration on armaments, filed to the Security Council last month, failed to account for all the weapons material produced in the past, according to Blix.

Blix — who heads to Baghdad on Sunday with Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the U.N. nuclear agency — said Tuesday: "There are a great many open questions as to their possession of weapons of mass destruction" and "we need to have more evidence supplied to us."

ElBaradei said the two men "intend to impress on Iraq the need to switch from passive cooperation to active cooperation."

Elbaradei also said his agency had received from other countries "actionable information" about sites that weapons inspectors should look into.

The United States has also been pressing inspectors to take scientists outside Iraq for interviews. But Blix said such interviews still pose challenges.

Military preparations for possible conflict continued apace on Tuesday. The United States, which is deploying about 100,000 troops to the Persian Gulf in preparation for a possible invasion, said it was calling up Iraqi exiles who wish to assist in such an attack.

The first batch of Iraqi dissidents who have volunteered to serve with U.S. forces have been told by the Pentagon to assemble at marshaling centers in the next several days, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Up to 3,000 Iraqis are expected to be trained to act as translators, guides, military police and liaisons between U.S. forces and the Iraqi population. Washington has ruled out early suggestions that the dissidents would be used in combat.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports that American and British pilots have struck targets inside the Southern no-fly zone on 80 occasions in the past five months, increasing both the frequency of the attacks and the importance of their targets — command centers, communication links and radar systems.