The 11 empty chemical warheads found by weapons inspectors in Iraq yesterday had not been declared by Baghdad in its recent declaration of weapons of mass destruction, UN officials said last night. However, Baghdad officials claimed the weapons were "old and expired". Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports
The discovery was described by US officials as a "smouldering gun" if not a "smoking gun" and has sharply raised tensions in the run-up to the UN inspectors' first formal report to the UN Security Council due on January 27th.
The chief weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, who will travel to Baghdad at the weekend, warned EU leaders in Brussels yesterday that his message for Iraqi leaders was that "the situation is very tense and very dangerous and everybody wants to see a verified and credible disarmament of Iraq".
With the United States stepping up its huge military presence around Iraq, Dr Blix said he was becoming "very impatient" with Baghdad and that Iraq "must do more than they have done so far."
President George Bush warned during a speech in Pennsylvania yesterday: "Time is running out, and at some point in time the United States's patience will run out."
Oil prices surged to their highest level in more than two years on Dr Blix's bleak assessment of the Iraq crisis, despite an agreement by OPEC to boost output.
The warheads found by inspectors were described as 122mm short-range missiles, about three metres long, designed for multiple launch and capable of carrying chemical weapons. They were being examined by experts, a UN spokesman, Mr Hiro Ueki, said.
"The warheads were in excellent condition and were similar to ones imported by Iraq during the late 1980s." A 12th warhead required further evaluation, he said. The UN office in Baghdad did not consider the discovery to be a "smoking gun" at the present time.
Gen Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, denied last night that the missiles had been hidden from inspectors. He told a Baghdad news conference that they were found at an old facility 250 miles south of the capital and had been "forgotten about".
He said they were artillery rockets imported in 1986 that had expired 10 years ago and that the inspectors had found similar rockets in 1997. This was an example of American pressure on UN inspectors. These types of weapons had been declared in 1996 and were in the 12,000-page declaration of December 12th, he said.
UN officials are expected to test the missiles to see if they were clean, or if they contained the residue of recent mustard gas or other chemical agents, or of cleaning agents to show they had once held chemicals. Iraq has denied that it has chemical weapons.
Dr Blix also told EU officials in Brussels that inspectors had also found conventional military equipment imported by Iraq in breach of UN sanctions.
"We have found things that have been illegally imported, even in 2001 and 2002. The question of whether they relate to weapons of mass destruction requires further inspection," he said.
Gen Amin said: "They did not find it, we declared it . . . Everybody knows that we have a military industry; we produce weapons - from bullets to handguns, artillery and artillery guns."
Dr Blix and the International Atomic Energy Agency director, Mr Mohamed el-Baradei, will visit Baghdad from January 19 to 20th. President Saddam Hussein is expected to make a televised speech today about developments.
Eager to keep up pressure on Iraq, the US is trying to stop UN inspectors from producing a new report at the end of March that could lead to a suspension of sanctions.
"No impression must be left with Iraq that we are slipping back to business as usual," the US ambassador to the UN, Mr John Negroponte, said yesterday.