The UN will give the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China an uncut copy of Iraq's arms dossier as early as today, in a reversal of an earlier Security Council decision, diplomats said.
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Mr Jacques Baute, UN weapons inspector, holds the suitcase containing documents detailing Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological activities, at Vienna airport yesterday.Photograph: AP
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A quiet deal was struck to over-ride a ruling on Friday of the full 15-member council, which feared that technical secrets on the manufacture of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons might pass into the wrong hands if the full document was circulated.
After weekend discussions involving UN weapons experts and diplomats of the United States and the four other permanent members of the council - all nuclear powers already - it was agreed to let the five have all 12,000 pages, diplomats said.
"The goal (earlier) was to keep the information out of the hands of those who might be able to use the information to make bombs. But those of us who already know how wouldn't learn anything from the full document," a diplomat from a permanent council member said.
UN experts in New York and Vienna began studying the dossier today to judge whether it said enough to satisfy UN demands for disarmament and perhaps to avert war with the United States.
Hours after the arms declaration arrived at the UN headquarters in New York, UN inspectors resumed their searches of suspect sites in Iraq, returning to a complex that was at the heart of previous efforts to make a nuclear bomb.
Washington stressed it would wait to see what was in the document flown from Baghdad on Sunday.
But US officials say they have their own evidence of continuing Iraqi nuclear, biological or chemical programmes and insist Washington will take military action if necessary to rid Iraq of them.
Earlier, the UN nuclear agency said Iraq's nuclear arms dossier appears to echo Saddam Hussein's claims that his country poses no atomic threat.
"At first glance, it appears the declaration is consistent with Iraq's statement that it has no nuclear weapons and that it has no nuclear weapons material or associated programs," said Ms Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).