BAGHDAD, 4 December 2002 — UN arms experts were able to inspect “every corner” of the Al-Sajoud palace compound during a groundbreaking inspection of the sensitive site yesterday, a UN spokesman said.

“We were able to inspect every corner of the presidential palace, every room, every corner,” Hiro Ueki said after the two-hour inspection of the compound, the first under the tough new disarmament regime adopted last month.

“Open the gate, we want to come in,” an inspector told guards at the palace gate. “We can’t, we are waiting for orders,” one replied. The inspector protested and a few minutes later the gates were opened.

Journalists were allowed a peek inside the grandiose palace ground after the UN experts and their Iraqi “minders” left.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described Iraq’s cooperation — not only at the palace but in other inspections so far — as good but cautioned “this is only the beginning.” Annan’s assessment appeared at odds with that of US President George W. Bush, who said Monday that early signs from Baghdad “are not encouraging.”

Iraq, meanwhile, promised yesterday to meet a UN deadline to hand over a declaration on its arms programs, but insisted it had no weapons of mass destruction to confess to.

In line with Baghdad’s avowed policy of complying with UN inspections in the hope of averting a full-scale US attack, an Iraqi official said a statement would be provided on Saturday — a day before time runs out. But in a reminder that a low-intensity conflict is already being waged, Iraq said it opened fire at Western warplanes yesterday.

“We are going to deliver this declaration in the proper time on the seventh of this month and the people here, the UNMOVIC and IAEA, will take this declaration to New York and Vienna,” said Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, referring to the two arms inspection bodies.

“Of course the declaration will have new elements but these new elements will not, shall we say, necessarily include a declaration of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. “We are a country devoid of weapons of mass destruction. This fact is known to all countries including the United States of America and Britain and all those concerned.”

A source close to UN weapons inspectors said yesterday that Iraq recently admitted to several failed attempts to acquire aluminum tubing for use in conventional weapons in violation of United Nations sanctions. But Baghdad immediately denied that claim, saying it has had the aluminum tubing since 1989, before the UN sanctions imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and was using them for the production of artillery shells.

“The Iraqis said they tried to import the aluminum tubing, but not for use in nuclear weapons as the US and Britain have alleged,” the source close to the inspectors told Reuters.

The source said the Iraqis told the inspectors after they returned to Baghdad last week that the tubing was to be used in multi-barreled rocket launchers. Baghdad also said it made several failed attempts to import the tubing.

Asked by reporters in Baghdad about the claims, Mohammed Amin said: “This is untrue”.

“This is a tube which was available in Iraq since 1989, before the (Gulf) war, and we did not import any such tubes and the situation was explained in detail to Mr. Hans Blix and Mr. Mohamed El-Baradei during the Baghdad discussions with the UNMOVIC and IAEA (chiefs),” he said.

US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in London war with Iraq was not inevitable, but that Saddam would have to go further than ever before if he wanted to avoid war. (The Independent)