Iraq's Invitation To The CIA

Iraq Monday mounted a public relations counterattack — offering to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to inspect suspected weapons sites — as Iraqi jets downed an American reconnaissance drone.

The unmanned Predator drone was conducting a reconnaissance mission in the southern no-fly zone, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said, when Iraqi fighter aircraft penetrated the zone and fired on the Predator, and its controllers then lost contact with the plane.

Iraq frequently fires on U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the two no-fly zones, and coalition aircraft often retaliate by bombing air defense stations. The frequency of these skirmishes appears to have increased as the prospect of all-out war looms larger.

Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said in a Monday briefing that if the drone had been shot down, it would not mark an escalation. He said two other drones had been shot down earlier.

That prospect grew last week when the United States said Iraq's 12,000-page weapons dossier was incomplete and constituted a "material breach": of United Nations requirements — terminology that could be used to justify war.

Iraq's chief science adviser Monday argued that it has already handed over every shred of information it has about it's weapons program, but if that still isn't enough, the CIA could come into Iraq to see for itself, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan.

Saddam's scientific adviser Amir Al-Saadi accused the United States and Britain of ignoring Iraq's replies and making judgments before U.N. experts could fully examine the Iraqi declaration.

"Why don't they let the specialized organs of the United Nations get on with their task?" al-Saadi asked at a televised news conference.

"We don't even have an objection if the CIA itself comes and joins the inspection teams to show them the places which they claim have something," he said. That despite the fact that Iraq frequently accused an earlier UN monitoring team of being a front for American intelligence.

Later, Saddam Hussein continued the theme, using a photo opportunity to criticize U.S. aggression and argued that after more than three weeks of UN inspections, nothing incriminating has been found.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said it was not clear how the United States would respond.

"I have no idea what the decision will be with respect to that; I read the same statements," Rumsfeld said. "I'm not sure if they're accurate or if they were actually given by responsible people there and I don't know quite what the United States might consider doing."

Saddam, facing strengthened United Nations resolution calling for him to reveal and destroy any weapons that he agreed to give up after the 1991 Gulf War, denies he has any.

The Bush administration, which contends Iraq does possess such arms, says the lack of discoveries to date is for lack of looking, is urging the UN to increase the number of inspectors to 300 — triple what's on the ground now.

Meanwhile, a chemical team returned to a baby milk factory bombed during the Gulf War, while others fanned out to an engineering company and an animal vaccination plant.

Also Monday, officials with the U.N. nuclear agency said its inspectors had begun interviewing Iraqi nuclear scientists on a one-on-one basis.

"We are now in a phase where those interviews are taking place, but we are not revealing when or how many or with whom," said Mark Gwozdecki, chief spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is searching for banned nuclear weapons.

U.N. experts have made almost daily inspections since resuming work in Iraq last month, working there for the first time since teams left in 1998 ahead of U.S. and British air strikes launched to punish Baghdad for alleged failure to cooperate.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said the Iraqi weapons declaration earlier this month leaves so many unanswered questions that it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of Iraq's claim to have no weapons of mass destruction. Blix has asked the United States and Britain to share intelligence to help inspectors determine the truth.

In Washington Saturday, two U.S. government officials said the United States has been providing the United Nations with intelligence on Iraqi weapons sites. A senior U.S. official added that in the next two weeks, as the inspectors grow in number in Iraq, the United States will provide more detailed intelligence reports.

The Bush administration insisted last week that the fact Iraq is in "material breach" was not a trigger for war. However, the deadline for the inspectors to report, Jan. 27, falls at an ideal time for Pentagon war planners, and a decision on whether the use force is expected then.

A senior administration official said on condition of anonymity Sunday that the United States is in "watch and wait" mode this week.

Babil, the Iraqi newspaper run by Saddam's son Odai, said in a front-page editorial Monday that the United States was a "terrorist country" that wanted to attack Iraq as part of a plot to control the region.