Iraqis Find More Empty Warheads

Top U.N. officials said Baghdad disclosed it found four more empty chemical warheads like a dozen others discovered last week, and said there had been "some progress" Sunday in talks to win greater Iraqi cooperation with arms inspectors.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he supports giving Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders immunity from war crimes prosecution if they go into exile. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that time was running out for the Iraqis.

U.N. chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei were in Baghdad Sunday for the first of two days of talks whose outcome could determine whether the United States, which disputes Iraq's claims that it has no banned weapons, mounts a military attack to disarm Iraq by force.

After more than two hours of talks, ElBaradei said, "I think we are making some progress. It was a constructive meeting."

As a sign that Baghdad might be more forthcoming, Blix said that the Iraqis told them during the talks that they had found four more empty chemical weapons warheads similar to 12 others discovered by U.N. inspectors Thursday at an ammunition dump south of Baghdad.

Blix also said the Iraqis offered three or four of 11 documents requested by the United Nations.

Blix did not say when or where the additional warheads were found. He and ElBaradei meet again with Iraqi officials Monday before departing for Athens, Greece.

"We have to ask: is this one find or are there weapons hidden all over the country?" Blix asked.

The White House termed Thursday's discovery of the warheads "troubling and serious" because the Iraqis had not reported the munitions in their 12,000-page declaration to the United Nations last month.

"Of course, they should have been properly declared, and in fact destroyed," Blix said in an interview in a televised interview. "The Iraqis claimed it was an oversight and they are looking for more of them. In fact, they said they found four more of them and they might find even further in the future."

Earlier Sunday, before leaving Cyprus, Blix told CBS News Anchor Dan Rather that Baghdad presented a new impediment to U.N. arms teams trying to do their job.

Blix told Rather that the Iraqis insisted that their helicopters go along with U.N. choppers taking the U.N. inspectors to a site in Iraq's nothern no-fly zone.

That, Blix explained to Rather, could be dangerous for the U.N personnel, since Iraqi craft operating in no-fly zones could be shot at.

As a result, Blix said, the inspection was cancelled.

ElBaradei confirmed to Rather that U.N. inspectors this week found papers in the private home of an Iraqi physicist on uranium enrichment of uranium, which could result in a material that could be used in a nucleaer weapon.

The physicist, Faleh Hassan, said the documents were from his private research projects and students' theses and he accused the inspectors of "Mafia-like" tactics.

However, ElBaradei told Rather that since the Iraqis had not disclosed information contained in the documents, "it obviously doesn't show the transparency we've been preaching."
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. —

In Washington, both Powell and Rumsfeld, appearing in separate television interviews, suggested that Saddam and his chief lieutenants might go into exile to avoid war. News reports in the Middle East say Saudi Arabia and others have been making overtures to Iraq about such a plan.

"I think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off, and this whole situation would be resolved, if Saddam Hussein ... his sons and the top leadership of the regime would leave," Powell said.

Rumsfeld, speaking in a broadcast interview, said he would favor granting Saddam and senior Iraqi leaders immunity from war crimes prosecution to clear the way for exile.

"I ... personally would recommend that some provision be made so that the senior leadership in that country and their families could be provided haven in some other country, and I think that that would be a fair trade to avoid a war," Rumsfeld said.

Powell underlined growing American impatience with Iraq, warning that "I think time is running out" for the Iraqis to come clean. "We can't keep this up forever," he said in a broadcast interview.

Powell said Iraq still has not accounted for stocks of biological and chemical warfare agents "that we know they had."

U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq in November to search for evidence of the weapons of mass destruction that the United States insists Saddam is hiding. On Sunday, inspectors visited an ammunition plant and a university south of Baghdad, a missile factory west of the capital, a chemical plant and another university campus here in Baghdad.

The talks in Iraq are in preparation for a Jan. 27 progress report weapons inspectors will make to the U.N. Security Council. Both officials have left no doubt that Iraq must show greater cooperation if it wants to avoid war.

The United States and Britain have sent tens of thousands of troops as well as naval ships and combat aircraft to the Gulf to ppe½rure the Iraqis.

On Sunday, allied jets struck eight unmanned Iraqi communications relay stations in the southern "no-fly zone," the U.S. Central Command said. It was the first attack since Friday in the southern zone, which was set up more than a decade ago to prevent Iraq's army from attacking restive Shiite Muslims.

"We do not think that war is inevitable," Blix told reporters Sunday. "We think that the inspection process that we are conducting is the peaceful alternative. It requires comprehensive inspections and it requires a very active Iraqi cooperation."

America's European allies have urged the Bush administration to give the inspectors more time to complete their work and avoid war. In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he would attend a meeting in New York of Security Council foreign ministers to urge "Iraq's disarmament through the work of the inspectors."

French President Jacques Chirac also said the United States should not attack without international support and said Saddam should cooperate more actively with the inspectors.

Meanwhile, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived Sunday at the southern Turkish air base of Incirlik before talks Monday with Turkish military officials.

The United States is urging Turkey to allow the United States to station ground troops in the country for a possible attack on Iraq. Polls show that 80 percent of the Turkish population opposes war with Iraq.