Weapons Inspector Asks For Patience

The top United Nations nuclear inspector said Monday that his team needs several more months to finish its job in Iraq — perhaps even as long as a year.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the exact time frame hinges on Iraq's willingness to cooperate. And he acknowledged the impatience of the United States and its allies.

"There is a great deal of anxiousness that we need to finish our job, our mission, as soon as possible," he said.

Speaking to reporters in Paris, he said Iraq is being asked to agree to interviews with scientists and show physical evidence of what facilities and weapons were destroyed in the past.

However, the inspectors in Iraq face mounting pressure on both sides. Iraq accuses the inspectors of gathering intelligence — charges U.N. officials deny. The inspectors also are under pressure from the United States, which has sent tens of thousands of U.S. troops to the Gulf and has threatened to go to war to disarm Saddam Hussein, saying it doesn't believe Iraqi denials of stockpiling banned weapons.

"We are aware of what is happening around us," said Hiro Ueki, the inspectors' spokesman in Baghdad. "We are not politicians. We have a job to do in Iraq and we want to do our job right."

ElBaradei said that so far, Iraq's cooperation has only been "passive."

A delay in the inspectors' final report, which had been tentatively expected on Jan 27, would push back the American timetable for possible war. Still more delay is possible, because some allies want to bring the issue back to the Security Council after the inspections are done and before any war.

Monday, the United States' strongest ally against Saddam Hussein, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was vague on whether Britain would go to war without U.N. approval.

Blair emphasized the importance of the world body's involvement but declined to say what he would do if the Council refused to support action against Saddam. He said Saddam still had a chance to end the confrontation peacefully.

Blair said he was "quite sure" the Iraqi leader possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the world must wait while inspectors search for them. If the inspectors find evidence Saddam has such weapons, Blair said at a monthly news conference, there is no alternative to disarming him.

"Whatever happens, Saddam will be disarmed," the prime minister said. "We have complete and total determination to do this. … It's not conflict that is inevitable, but disarmament is inevitable."

"Even now, Saddam should take the peaceful route and disarm," Blair said. "If he does not, however, he will be disarmed by force."

Blair has faced strong opposition from legislators in his own governing Labor Party and many Britons to the possibility of war on Iraq without the backing of the U.N. Security Council.

Britain is expected to send troops to any U.S.-led military action, although the government insists no commitment has been made. The British Ministry of Defense Monday confirmed a contingent of British logistics experts had arrived in Kuwait for military exercises. The British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal also set sail Saturday toward the Gulf.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week signed deployment orders to send about 62,000 more U.S. troops to the Gulf — doubling the current troop strength in the region.

A poll published Monday suggests a majority of Britons — 58 percent — do not believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is sufficiently dangerous to justify a war.

Only 13 percent of the 1,425 adults polled online Jan. 10-12 by YouGov, an Internet-based outfit, said they would back British involvement in military action against Iraq without U.N. backing.

But 53 percent said they would if military action was approved by the United Nations. Thirty-two percent said British troops should not take part under any circumstances.

On the ground in Iraq, weapons inspectors took their investigation into Iraqi arms programs to Baghdad science and technology colleges on Monday.

Teams of U.N. nuclear and chemical weapons experts visited Baghdad's technological university and two science colleges, according to the Information Ministry. A nuclear team also visited the Ibn Rushed company, which it said repairs and maintains firefighting equipment and provides quality control for construction materials. Other teams headed to unspecified sites outside the Iraqi capital.

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather reports from Baghdad that, despite the talk of war, the city has "an eerie normalcy." State-run media Monday touted Iraqis' determination to carry on with their lives despite the rapid U.S. military buildup in the Gulf.

"While preparing itself to face all possibilities, Iraq … will not be distracted from its present and future by America's loud talk," said a front-page editorial in Al-Thawra, newspaper of President Saddam Hussein's Baath party.