No 'material breach' so far, says Baradei

Mohamed Al-Baradei, the chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, put himself starkly at odds with Britain and the United States, asserting that he would only raise a red flag on Baghdad if it committed what he called a "gross violation" of UN resolutions giving it a final chance to disarm.

His comments underscored a widening rift with Hans Blix, who is in charge of hunting down evidence of Iraqi non-compliance in the missile, biological and chemical fields.

Mr Baradei, who heads the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, made it clear that he had not seen cause to declare that Iraq was in "material breach" of the resolutions, a step that could trigger war. London and Washington have already said Iraq is in material breach because of a lack of co-operation.

"We are not going to say that this is a material breach unless obviously we see a gross violation of the resolution.," he said. " But even then it is for the Security Council to pronounce itself on this issue."

Mr Baradei repeated that it was far too soon to declare that the inspection process had already been proved useless, as argued in recent days by some in Washington. And he went further, predicting that in the nuclear sphere, Iraq would prove to be guiltless. President George Bush said the opposite on Tuesday, alleging that Iraq had a secret nuclear programme. "I believe in the next few months, probably four or five months, we should be able to come to a conclusion that Iraq is clean from nuclear weapons," Mr Baradei said.

On Monday, Mr Blix offered a far gloomier assessment of Iraq's response to the UN, complaining that it had failed to explain the whereabouts of missing chemical warheads and anthrax and VX agents. Unlike Mr Baradei, he did not ask the Security Council for more time.