Iraqis set to hand over weapons list

Officials in Baghdad were putting the finishing touches to what was described as a "huge declaration", running to thousands of pages.

The document was expected to contain details of nuclear, biological and chemical activities which Baghdad insists are peaceful, but to declare that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

Iraqi officials will hand over the document to UN officials as well as to members of the Unmovic weapons inspection team and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Baghdad late today.

Copies of the dossier - reported to be as much as 13,000 pages long - will then be flown to UN headquarters in New York and the IAEA’s offices in Vienna for what is expected to be a lengthy analysis.

No immediate judgment was expected on whether it complies with the requirements of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, under which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein must give full details of any weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missile programmes, as well as any non-military nuclear, biological or chemical activities. But any sensitive material that is found will not be shared with the United States or other governments, chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix has said.

The US and other UN Security Council members decided yesterday that the material - which could include recipes for chemical and biological weapons - should be kept secret, even from the council itself, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

As a result, inspectors plan to weed out the sensitive details as well as translate the Arabic sections before giving the declaration to the council in a process that may take a week. The declaration was expected to be delivered to inspectors in Baghdad at 8pm (5pm British time) and then taken by courier to UN headquarters in New York tomorrow, the deadline for its arrival.

The declaration is a crucial requirement that Iraq must meet and security council members and weapons experts will be combing it to assess whether Baghdad is telling the truth.

Omissions or false statements, coupled with any Iraqi failure to cooperate with weapons inspectors, could trigger war.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri said the report would reflect Iraq’s long-standing claims that it was free of weapons of mass destruction although it would also contain some "new elements", which he did not disclose.

US officials say they are sure Iraq has such weapons and on Thursday, the White House said "solid evidence" would be turned over to UN inspectors.

Yesterday, the White House said it wanted Unmovic - the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission - to offer Iraqi scientists with promises of safety and asylum in exchange for evidence against Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes.

"We take the issue very seriously and attach great importance to it. We hope the international community would also attach the same importance to the issue," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. But Blix said: "We are not going to abduct anybody, and we’re not serving as a defection agency."

The joint US-UK resolution adopted by the UN on November 8 requires Iraq to provide an "accurate, full, and complete declaration" of nuclear, biological and chemical and missile programmes by December 8.

It says that "false statements or omissions" in Iraq’s declaration, coupled with a failure to cooperate with inspectors, would amount to a "material breach" of the resolution, and would justify "serious consequences" - widely assumed to mean war. Baghdad has complained that the resolution is so broad that it requires the declaration even of innocent petro-chemical industries.

Blix had called on the Iraqis to examine their "stocks and stores" before declaring they had no prohibited weapons left. But Al-Douri was adamant yesterday that Iraq no longer had any. The inspectors hope the Iraqis at least will help them answer some open questions by supplying convincing documentation on the fate of 550 artillery shells filled with poisonous mustard gas. Iraqi and UN accounts contain many such discrepancies from the 1990s.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said earlier: "This weekend will not be the moment to declare Iraq either in breach or in compliance." But he added: "A false declaration would make clear to the world that Saddam’s strategy is deceit. We will not allow him to get away with it."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defence would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it."