Iraq's proposal to open up eight presidential sites to inspections for a month would not solve the inspectors' difficulties, according to the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) responsible for scrapping Iraq's dangerous weapons.
Mr Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UNSCOM, said it appeared Iraq was offering a one-off deal that would bar inspectors from ever looking at the sites again. He said one of the presidential sites in downtown Baghdad "contains hundred of buildings which would, under this proposal, appear to be out of bounds".
He said this would be at odds with earlier council demands of unrestricted access and the commission's long-term arms monitoring program which "requires the right to have repeated access".
Iraq's offer does not satisfy the US demand for "unfettered" access but it indicates that Baghdad may change its position, the White House said yesterday.
The offer, communicated through the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr Mussa, in Cairo, is an "indication that they (the Iraqi government) are beginning to get the message" that Washington wants full compliance with the inspections, the White House spokesman, Mr Michael McCurry, said.
"The fact that the government of Iraq is now seeming to recognise that there is going to have to be some additional access to sites and that they can't continue to block so-called presidential sites" is a sign Baghdad may comply with UN and US demands.
CNN quoted the Iraqi sources as saying the 15 members of the Security Council would be invited to pick five inspectors each, along with two each from the 21-member advisory board of the Special Commission.
It said the UN representatives could have unfettered access to the sites and bring any analytical equipment they needed. It said UNSCOM inspectors could join the teams but they would report to the Security Council, not UNSCOM.
The proposal is bound to be rejected by the council, should it be formally presented by Iraq, diplomats said. The British ambassador, Sir John Weston said he hoped "sooner rather than later the Iraqis will comply" with international law.
During the visit by the UNSCOM chairman, Mr Richard Butler, to Baghdad last month, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tareq Aziz, identified eight complexes containing President Saddam Hussein's residences and government buildings around them, including ministries. These he said were closed to inspectors.
In a report to the Security Council Mr Butler said Mr Aziz told him the complexes were located in four provinces and included "a multiplicity of buildings and the surrounding areas inside the perimeter walls".
Yesterday the Arab League secretary-general, Mr Esmat Abdel Meguid, met Mr Aziz in Baghdad. The official Iraqi news agency, INA, reported the meeting but gave no details of the talks. Mr Abdel Meguid, on his first visit to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, arrived yesterday via Amman, where he held talks with the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Mr Fayez Tarawneh.
Mr Abdel Meguid described his mission as "difficult and dangerous" and said he is "not carrying any definite ideas or proposals at the moment." However, he said "the Arab states are intent on using all means to avoid more military action".
"I don't believe that any Arab state would agree to a military strike on Iraq because we are on the way to finding a peaceful solution even though the situation is dangerous and worries us," Mr Abdel Meguid said.
He was speaking a day after the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, said she was confident that Gulf Arab countries would co-operate in mounting a possible attack on Iraq for blocking UN weapons inspections.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who chaired the last Arab summit in June 1996, has entrusted the Arab League secretary-general with meeting Mr Saddam to try to find ways to resolve the crisis peacefully.
Senior aides from the 22-member Arab League are accompanying Mr Abdel Meguid.