The International Atomic Energy Agency has turned down
an Arab request to expand its presence on inspection teams searching for
Iraqi nuclear weapons.
IAEA officials said the agency turned down an Arab League request to
place additional Arab nationals in the inspections team being formed and
sent to Baghdad on Monday. A number described as a "handful" of the more than 200 IAEA staffers
are Arab
nationals.
"Diversity is necessary," IAEA director Mohammed El Baradei, an Egyptian
national, said. "The key is competence and impartiality."
The UN has trained 250 people for weapons inspections. Officials said
about 100 of them will be on the mission at any given time.
Western diplomats said seven of the 270 staffers in UNMOVIC are composed
of nationals from Jordan and Morocco. Arab nationals comprise four of 20
IAEA inspectors.
El Baradei, who leads an IAEA inspection team that arrives in Baghdad on
Monday told the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
last week that he intends to preserve what he termed the integrity and
impartiality of the inspections teams. He said this would rule out any
outside influence on the agency's activities.
"Efforts by national governments to infiltrate the inspection process
are ultimately counterproductive, because they lead to the destruction of
the very fabric of the process, let alone credibility," he said.
The IAEA chief also said his staff would act in a professional manner
and carefully examine Iraq's response to inspections. He said his agency Ñ
which declared in 1990 that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons Ñ would seek
to determine a pattern rather than interpret any omission as a material
breach of the Security Council resolution 1441.Ñ
"If there is a pattern of lack of cooperation, then we have to report to
the Security Council and the Security Council will decide if that is a
material breach," El Baradei said. "[If] there is minor omission and this is
clearly not intentional, we are not running to the Security Council to say
that it's a material breach."
