Iraq Inspectors: Work Only 'Midcourse'

The chief U.N. weapons inspectors will tell the Security Council next week that there is a lot more work to be done in Iraq.

Mohammed ElBaradei says answering remaining questions requires a more "intrusive" inspection process, but "we still believe a war is avoidable."

ElBaradei says he and Blix will report to the Security Council next week that inspections are in "midcourse," and they have not yet completed their work.

He says they still have work to do, including possible interviews of Iraqi scientists. Hans Blix says the scientists could be questioned on the island of Cyprus.

Blix and ElBaradei spoke to reporters in Athens after two days of talks in Baghdad, where the Iraqis agreed to tell their scientists to submit to private interviews. The talks also produced a ten-point agreement to make inspections more effective.

As CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, after weekend meetings with senior Iraqi officials, Chief U.N. inspector Blix announced they had made concessions.

"We need to come to an effective and credible inspection process and we have come along way on that," Blix said.

The main points of the agreement are that Iraq will now support the inspectors' access to private sites like houses or farms. They will also encourage their scientists to hold private talks with the inspectors - without government supervision. The Iraqis will also set up their own team to search for banned weapons that may have been overlooked.

According to Palmer, these concessions are minor compared to the major differences that remain. Iraq still refuses to allow U2 spy planes to fly reconnaissance for the inspectors and it can not or will not provide the proof demanded by the U.S. that it has destroyed stocks of nerve gas and anthrax.

Earlier, Secretary of State Colin Powell, faced with stiff resistance and calls to go slow, bluntly told other nations on Monday that the United Nations "must not shrink" from its responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

"We cannot be shocked into impotence because we're afraid of the difficult choices ahead of us," Powell told members of the U.N. Security Council.

Directly responding to qualms registered by several foreign ministers in two days of talks, and with only Britain explicitly standing alongside the United States, Powell spoke of war as a real option.

Germany's foreign minister took a strong stand against military action, saying it might have "negative repercussions" for the international fight against terrorism. His French counterpart called war "a dead end."

Powell, speaking at a U.N. conference on terrorism and at a news conference, urged reluctant nations to focus on Baghdad's failure to disarm and to prepare to weigh the consequences by the end of the month when U.N. inspectors file a report on 60 days of searches in Iraq for illicit weapons.

"If Iraq is not disarming, the United Nations cannot turn away from its responsibilities," Powell said.

He said the U.N. Security Council, which is due to consider the report on Jan. 29, must come to grips with a regime that he said has acquired, developed and stocked weapons of mass destruction and trampled human rights at home.

"So no matter how difficult the road ahead may be with respect to Iraq, we must not shrink from a need to travel down that road," Powell said.

"Hopefully, there will be a peaceful solution," he said. "But if Iraq does not come into full compliance, we must not shrink from the responsibilities that we set before ourselves" when the Security Council called for the disarmament of Iraq.

Casting aside diplomatic ambiguity, Powell spoke directly of war. "Iraq has a responsibility now to avoid a conflict, to avoid a war," he said.

The U.N. inspectors, by contrast, have said they were making progress in their searches, may require months more of time, and have referred to the report due next Monday as only an interim report. Some 16 chemical weapons warheads have been divulged by Iraq, a move taken by the inspectors as a sign of cooperation.

But Powell brushed that aside. He said of the Iraqis: "We cannot let them dribble out this information, dribble these warheads out."

Iraq knows how many weapons of mass destruction it has hidden away, Powell said, "We will not allow Iraq to frustrate the will of the world."

Separately, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that U.N. weapons inspectors would need months of additional time to determine whether Iraq is meeting its obligation to disarm.

According to CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts, eight weeks into U.N. inspections and White House officials said it will be Iraq's cooperation with inspectors that will make the difference between war and peace - not evidence of a so-called 'smoking gun'.

"The burden of proof is on Iraq to prove that it is disarming," Rumsfeld said in a speech to a Reserve Officers Association conference. "Thus far they have been unwilling to do so."

As Roberts reports, in a new offensive leading up to next Monday's U.N. report on Iraq, the deputy Secretaries of State and Defense will lay out the case that Saddam is not co-operating. Among other arguments - they'll contrast Iraq's behavior with that of South Africa when it agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, in his U.N. speech, said it was important to "wait and see what the inspectors actually say," but he emphasized that "time is running out for Saddam Hussein."

"This game of hide-and-seek has got to stop and there's got to be complete, active, positive compliance by Iraq with the obligations imposed on Iraq by this Security Council," he said. Straw spoke as Britain announced it was sending 26,000 troops to the Persian Gulf in preparation for possible military action against Iraq.

Other Europeans said they had yet to be convinced war would not make things worse.

"We have no illusions about the brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's regime," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher said during a daylong Security Council meeting on counterterrorism. But, he said: "We are greatly concerned that a military strike against the regime in Baghdad would involve considerable and unpredictable risks for the global fight on terrorism."

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said he believed Iraq could still be disarmed through peaceful means. "We believe that today, nothing justifies envisaging military action .... As long as you can make progress with the inspectors and get cooperation, there's no point in choosing the worst possible solution - military intervention."

Resolution 1441, crafted by Washington and London and passed by a unanimous Security Council in November, warns Iraq of "serious consequences," if it fails to comply with inspections.