IRAQ: President Saddam Hussein will deliver a televised speech this morning marking the 12th anniversary of the Gulf war, the official Iraqi News Agency announced yesterday.
It said President Saddam would deliver a speech at 8 a.m. on the anniversary of the 1991 US-led war which ended Iraq's short invasion of its neighbour Kuwait.
His comments will be listened to closely by UN weapons inspectors and the Bush administration for any indication that the Iraqi regime is willing to engage more actively with the inspection teams.
President Bush said earlier this week that he was "sick and tired" of Iraq's alleged deception over banned weapons, and that time was running out for it to comply with UN demands to disarm.
The address will follow a dramatic day for the inspectors yesterday in which they said they had found empty warheads designed to carry chemical warfare agents, some illegally-imported conventional military equipment and had raided the homes of two Iraqi scientists.
Gen Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, told a news conference in Baghdad that the inspectors had visited 380 sites since they resumed work on November 27th.
Iraqi presidential adviser Mr Amir al-Saadi, reacting to a statement by the head of the UN inspection team, Dr Hans Blix, that the inspectors had found smuggled military equipment in Iraq, said: "They did not find it, we declared it...Everybody knows that we have a (conventional) military industry; we produce weapons from bullets to hand guns, artillery and artillery guns. How do we produce these, from air?"
He said the imports were not in breach of the Security Council resolutions, which banned countries from exporting them to Iraq but did not ban Baghdad from acquiring them.
Mr al-Saadi, and Gen Amin criticised the inspectors' surprise visits to the homes of two Iraqi scientists, saying the visits encroached on the human rights of both men, but acknowledging that they did not breach the inspectors' mandate.
Mr al-Saadi said it was up to the individuals themselves to allow inspectors into their homes, and the authorities could not make people open their doors to the inspectors without a court order.
It was not clear last night whether the chemical weapons warheads had ever contained banned substances. Samples were taken for testing. A UN spokesman, Mr Hiro Ueki, did not expand on the significance of the find, which was made during an inspection of the Ukhaider ammunition storage area, which lies 75 miles south of Baghdad.
"During the course of their inspection, the team discovered 11 empty chemical warheads and one warhead that requires further evaluation," he said in a statement. The team had gone there to view a large group of bunkers built in the late 1990s.
"The warheads were in excellent condition and were similar to ones imported by Iraq during the late 1980s. The team used portable X-ray equipment to conduct preliminary analysis of one of the warheads and collected samples for chemical testing."
There was no immediate comment from Iraqi officials.
Inspectors complained again yesterday that Iraq has failed to provide evidence of action it says it took to destroy stocks of banned weapons after previous UN teams left in 1998.
Dr Blix said in Brussels, where he briefed EU leaders, that Iraq must prove it has destroyed banned weapons and let its scientists answer questions freely to defuse what he called a "very dangerous" situation.
Mr al-Saadi said his country was ready to answer any questions. "All this will be discussed and we will reply officially and hand it over to the Security Council."