Iraq imposes new ban on weapons inspectors

Iraq yesterday headed into a new confrontation with the UN saying it will not allow any arms inspection by an American it claims is a spy. It also complained that the inspection team was dominated by US and British experts. Patrick Cockburn reports on the renewed crisis.

"It is absolutely untrue," says Scott Ritter, the head of the UN team monitoring Iraqi strategic arms. "I have never been employed or affiliated with the CIA. I find it disturbing and even insulting that Iraqi authorities with whom I have worked in the past six years would undertake such tactics."

Iraq announced yesterday that from this morning Mr Ritter would be banned from carrying out inspections. A UN official confirmed that the team contained nine Americans, five Britons, a Russian and an Australian. The decision by Iraq appears to mean that the confrontation between Iraq and the US which led to a crisis in November is set to resume.

The Iraqi News Agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that Mr Ritter's team included too many Americans and Britons, adding the team will not be allowed to carry out inspections unless it is recomposed in a more balanced manner.

In New York, Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the inspection team, said the United Nations had not been informed officially of the Iraqi decision: "We're trying to find out what this means."

In November, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, ordered American inspectors out of the country on the grounds they were spies. The UN then withdrew all of its inspectors in protest. They were allowed to return a week later under a Russian-brokered deal. Inspections have resumed without confrontation since then, although Iraq still refuses to allow inspectors into Saddam Hussein's palaces and other so-called sensitive sites.

The UN says that trade sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait will not be lifted until its weapons of mass destruction are destroyed. Iraq and much of the Arab world sees the weapons inspections as simply a way for the US and Britain to keep Iraq permanently under economic embargo and politically weak.