Iraq Gives UN List Of Scientists

Iraq delivered a list to United Nations officials Saturday of over 500 scientists who have worked on nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs, a U.N. official said.

Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the U.N. program in Baghdad, said Iraqi officials handed over the list to U.N. officials, a key demand of Security Council Resolution 1441 aimed at forcing Iraq to verify it has no weapons of mass destruction.

"Today we have received the list of names of personnel" connected to Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, Ueki told reporters during a press conference. The list contained more than 500 names, he added.

The list is written in Arabic and is being translated by U.N. officials in Baghdad. Copies of the list have also been sent to New York and Vienna.

Meantime The New York Times reports in its Sunday editions that Saudi Arabia has told American military officials the kingdom would make its airspace, air bases and an important operations center available to the United States in the event of war with Iraq.

Saudi Arabia was the main staging area for American forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but conflicting public statements by top Saudi officials over the past several months have cast doubt on Saudi Arabia's support for military operations against Iraq this time around.

American commanders now say they have been given private assurances in recent weeks that they will be allowed to run an air war against Iraq from a sophisticated command center at Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, the Times says. It is the same command post that ran the air campaign in Afghanistan.

Because of its nearness to Iraq and large, modern facilities like the Prince Sultan base, Saudi Arabia offers crucial advantages as a staging area for military operations, the Times explains. But because of uncertainty about Saudi cooperation, the Pentagon proceeded with plans to build an alternate air command post in Qatar, where the overall American command for Iraqi operations will be headquartered.

American commanders now say allied refueling, reconnaissance, surveillance and cargo planes will be allowed to fly from Saudi bases, using Saudi airspace on the way to missions in or near Iraq, the newspaper reports. And these officials are expressing confidence that the Saudis will ultimately allow attack missions, which are more politically sensitive, to be flown from their soil.

In a significant sign of the new cooperation, Saudi officials over the past two months have quietly permitted American warplanes based in the kingdom to bomb targets in southern Iraq in response to Iraqi violations of the no-flight zone there. Previously, those missions were flown out of Kuwait.

Under the toughened U.N. weapons inspections that resumed Nov. 27, inspectors can speak privately with scientists and workers associated with Iraq's weapons - and even take them abroad for interviews. U.S. officials have said they hope the privacy would prompt scientists to reveal hidden weapons programs.

The inspectors have been speaking to engineers and experts at sites they have searched, but they made their first request to interview a scientist privately on Tuesday.

And there are problems, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan. There's no guarantee the scientists on that list will agree to be interviewed, and the UN can't do much about it. And Iraq knows it.

Neither of the two scientists interviewed so far agreed to be questioned in private, Cowan points out. And if the UN is hoping for substantial new information from interviewing scientists, the two questioned so far have yielded very little, Cowan says.

Ueki also tried to clear the air over a storm that erupted following Friday's interview conducted by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, of an Iraqi scientist - the second such interview to have taken place.

The U.N. spokesman said in a press statement Friday that Kazem Mojbal, an Iraqi metallurgist at the state-run Al-Raya company, had given U.N. officials details about an unidentified Iraqi military program that "has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program."

Mojbal on Saturday rejected the U.N.' account of his meeting with the inspectors.

"I strongly deny this," Mojbal told reporters Saturday. "I explained to them that I have nothing to do with the previous nuclear program or any other prohibited projects."

Later Saturday, Ueki said the United Nations knew that Mojbal was not involved in Iraq's past nuclear program. He also said that his Friday statement did not make a judgment about Iraq having a clandestine nuclear program, instead made a "general statement about the fact that the matter in question, which involves aluminum tubes, attracted attention (of the agency)."

Iraq has acknowledged that it has imported aluminum tubes for conventional weapons. But the Bush administration has said the tubes could be used to build centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

The Bush administration has threatened to attack Iraq unless it cooperates fully with the U.N. disarmament process.

If Iraq can persuade the inspectors it is not hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or the missiles to deliver them, it might avoid a U.S. strike. But the inspectors have said an Iraqi weapons declaration is wanting, and the United States has dismissed it as a lie.

The Iraqi government scoffed Saturday at Washington's decision to deploy thousands of additional troops to the region in preparation for possible war, as U.N. arms inspectors visited five suspected weapons sites in and around the capital.

"Whoever dares to strike Iraq and its people will pay a high price," the official Iraqi army newspaper, Al-Qadissiya, said in an editorial.

"The beating of war drums, the noise of weapons, the sending of warships, the mobilizing of armies will neither frighten nor terrorize the Iraqis," said the paper.

Correspondent Cowan, who's in Baghdad, said Saturday, "The sense on the street is really that war is inevitable, regardless of what Iraq says, regardless of what the inspectors find. The general sense is this is going to happen, and probably within the next several weeks."

Thousands of U.S. troops, two aircraft carrier battle groups, two amphibious-ready groups and scores of combat aircraft have received orders since Christmas to ready themselves to head to the Gulf region in January and February, American defense officials said Friday. Military personnel will go to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, among other locations.

Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh opened a seminar in Baghdad on Saturday saying that Iraq would defeat any invader.

"Iraqis will fight under the leadership of the holy leading warrior (President) Saddam Hussein," said Saleh, dressed in a military uniform. "We will fight from village to village, from city to city, from street to street in every city."

The Iraqi Information Ministry said teams of U.N. inspectors went to the al-Qa'qaa complex, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and four other sites, including the al-Kindi vaccine factory - which was inspected on Dec. 22 - and the Ibn Younis engineering plant.

The inspectors have visited al-Qa'qaa eight times since they resumed their work on Nov. 27. The huge complex houses several factories, including one used to make parts for nuclear and conventional missiles.