Iraq: U.N. Can Dig Up Buried Weapons

After a week of intense talks, the United Nations and Iraq agreed Saturday that U.N. experts will dig up sites where Baghdad says it buried chemical weapons and missile warheads once loaded with chemical and biological agents.

The excavations may help clarify the number of warheads that U.N. experts cannot account for. But it is unclear how the excavations will help prove Iraq's claims it has destroyed all its chemical weapons. Iraq experimented with many kinds of chemical agents.

Iraqis say weapons-burial sites are scattered across the country. Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid, a mastermind of Iraq's weapons programs, said he feared some Iraqis may have tinkered with certain unguarded sites.

Sources close to the talks, which Iraq had hoped would end its current standoff with the U.N., said the experts insisted on the probe when they found Iraqi documentation insufficient to prove that the weapons had been eliminated.

The proposal signals that the talks did not end doubts among U.N. inspectors that Iraq still might be hiding missile warheads and chemical weapons it claims to have destroyed in 1991 and 1992. The U.N. inspectors also believe the Iraqis still have biological agents.

"We should not expect too much result from the talks, but they were quite positive," Rashid told reporters.

Iraq is locked in a confrontation with the U.N. over weapons inspections. Should diplomacy fail, the U.S. is threatening a military strike to force Iraq into compliance with U.N. weapons demands.

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