IRAQ: President Saddam Hussein yesterday accused UN inspectors of carrying out "intelligence work" and pursuing "hidden agendas" inside Iraq, rather than searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The allegations were made in a televised speech broadcast in Iraq to commemorate Army Day.
Meanwhile, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, said yesterday its inspectors had found nothing suspicious in Iraq so far, but added that it was too early to draw conclusions.
Other Iraqi officials have voiced complaints of intelligence gathering since the return of weapons inspectors, but the Iraqi President did not suggest such suspicions would precipitate an end to co-operation with the UN. Allegations of US spying, made in 1998, were followed by the collapse of the last monitoring regime.
The collecting of scientists' names, and the questions being put to them by UN officials, indicated the presence of "hidden agendas", the Iraqi leader said.
"Instead of searching for so-called weapons of mass destruction...the inspection teams became interested in compiling lists of Iraqi scientists, \ workers questions that are not what they seem and gathering information about army camps and legitimate military production. These things, or most of them, are pure intelligence work."
He said the inspectors' investigations exceeded the declared objective of the UN Security Council. "We shall thank the Almighty if he guides the enemies to the right path," he said, insisting he would prefer peaceful resolution instead of confrontation.
If attacked by the US, however, the Iraqis would prevail because truth and justice were on their side.
"Whoever is in his own homeland...and is forced to face an enemy that stands on the side of falsehood and comes as an aggressor from beyond seas and oceans, will no doubt emerge triumphant."
President Saddam said he would be grateful if God "destroys them [the enemies] and brings shame to their arrogance". He appealed to Arabs, saying the US was trying to divert attention from "the heinous crimes perpetrated by the Zionist entity \ against our people in Palestine".
Talk of war in Washington was designed to distract Americans from their country's problems, he added, taunting President Bush about "the weakness of [US security] agencies" which led to the September 11th attacks and "the weakness, or indeed near collapse, of the US economy".
However a spokeswoman for the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ms Melissa Fleming, said if inspectors were gathering intelligence "it is intelligence for the UN".
Mr Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the chief weapons inspector, Dr Mans Blix, has previously asserted that any inspector found working for individual governments would be fired.
The UN teams examined at least four Iraqi sites yesterday, including al-Tuweitha compound, the location of Iraq's nuclear programme which has been inspected repeatedly in recent weeks.
Mr ElBaradei said: "We haven't yet seen any smoking gun yet, if you like, that Iraq has lied in its declaration on the nuclear issue. But we're still very much in the process of an inspection and it's too early for us to come to any conclusion."