Iraq has stepped up its co-operation with the United Nations and has provided documents that give new information about the destruction of its most lethal weapons in 1991, chief UN weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, said yesterday in New York, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor.
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein faces a window of 10 days to produce convincing evidence of full disarmament before a vote in the UN Security Council that could be the prelude to attack by US forces.
President Bush warned again yesterday that Iraq must fully disarm to avoid war, and called upon the UN to "honour its word" and back any US action against Saddam.
US officials have already dismissed the new Iraqi documentation as of little consequence, while British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair yesterday rejected the Franco-German initiative to extend inspections, saying it was "absurd" to think UN inspectors could find illegal weapons without Baghdad's full co-operation.
The failure of Iraq to produce documents or personnel to substanbtiate claims it has destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons is at the heart of the US-British case against Baghdad.
Asked if the new documents indicated substantive co-operation by Iraq, Dr Blix replied, "Yes, here are some elements that are positive." He said the disclosures were contained in a series of six letters provided by Iraqi authorities in the last few days, and needed to be explored further by the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
"There is one letter in which they tell us that they have found a R-400 bomb containing liquid in a disposal site in Baghdad," Dr Blix said.
"There is another letter that tells us that they have found some handwritten documents concerning the act of disposal of prohibited items in 1991. Now, all these have to be followed up but these are new elements," he said.
Iraq acknowledged in 1995 it had manufactured 155 R-400 bombs filled with biological agents including anthrax spores but said they had been buried during the Gulf War.
Iraq's UN ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, said the new information came from two commissions set up this month to search for evidence that Iraq had disposed of all its nuclear, chemical, biological and long-range weapons.
White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer described the Iraqi discovery of a filled aerial bomb as "the very nature of the problem with Iraq - that all of a sudden they will start to discover weapons they said they never had".
"The United Nations inspectors, when they left the country, said there were 400 such weapons unaccounted for. Now we found one - where are the other 399?"
He said there was still "a slim chance" that the US would not take the road to war. "There remains an off-ramp," he said, but it depended on Saddam Hussein fully disarming. Mr Bush predicted that Saddam would try to "fool the world one more time", by revealing the existence of weapons that he has previously denied having.
Dr Blix and a commission of UN advisers are compiling a report of 30 to 40 "clusters" of unresolved disarmament questions to be tabled at the UN on Saturday and discussed on March 7th by the full Security Council.
UN Security Council members will meet tomorrow to consider two opposing proposals, one from the US, Britain and Spain that would open the way to war by declaring Iraq had failed to disarm, and another from France, Germany and Russia urging 120 more days of inspections.
Mr Bush said yesterday it would be helpful to pass the new resolution, which is likely to come to a vote on or after March 7th, "but I don't believe we need a second resolution."
Meanwhile US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday in Washington he believed that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons are more advanced now than they were during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.