Inspectors accused of trying to trigger war

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq protested sharply Wednesday over U.N. weapons inspectors' surprise intrusion into one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces, accusing the arms experts of being spies and staging the palace search as a provocation that could lead to war.

The harshest criticism came from Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who charged -- in language reminiscent of clashes with inspectors in the 1990s -- that the new teams of U.N. monitors are gathering intelligence for Washington and Israel.

"Their work is to spy to serve the CIA and Mossad," Israel's intelligence service, Ramadan claimed to a visiting delegation of Egyptian professionals.

Ramadan, known for his fiery statements, claimed to his all-Arab audience that the inspectors went to the palace hoping to provoke the Iraqis into refusing them entrance -- something he said would be interpreted as a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution that mandated the inspections, and a cause for war.

The resolution includes "several land mines," Ramadan said, "and the aim is that one of them will go off."

The inspectors denied Ramadan's claims they were spying. "Clearly we are there to work for the Security Council. We are not there to work for member states," Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, said in New York.

Blix "has made it clear to the Iraqis and also publicly that if he finds anybody working for governments then he would immediately fire them," Buchanan said.

The inspections resumed last week after a four-year suspension, under a new U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to surrender any remaining weapons of mass destruction and shut down any programs to make them.

A critical deadline approaches this weekend for the Baghdad government. On Saturday, a day ahead of the deadline, it is expected to submit a declaration to the United Nations on any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as well as on nuclear, chemical and biological programs it says are peaceful.

In other developments Wednesday:

UPGRADING BASES IN TURKEY: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said the Bush administration is planning to spend "hundreds of millions" of dollars preparing Turkish bases for U.S. and allied planes and equipment as U.S. officials appeared poised to press its key ally to host large numbers of troops in the event of a war with Iraq.

Having secured a pledge from Turkey's newly elected government this week to open some of its ports and air bases to the gathering U.S.-led coalition, Pentagon planners are now identifying what bases they would need for an attack on Turkey's southern neighbor and what it would take to upgrade them.

"We're going to go now immediately into very concrete discussions about what facilities might be used, what forces might be employed on them, how much money needs to be invested to bring them to the level that we need," Wolfowitz said before leaving the Turkish capital, Ankara, to seek broader support for a campaign against Iraq at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

"We're talking potentially about tens of millions -- probably several hundred million dollars -- of investment in various facilities we might use."

OIL-FOR-FOOD RENEWED: The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to extend the U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq for six months and review a list of goods that Baghdad needs approval to import within 30 days.

The resolution represented a compromise between the United States, which wants to quickly add about 50 items with possible military uses to the list, and the other 14 council members, who wanted to renew the oil-for-food program for the usual six-month period.

The United States had been at odds with the rest of the Security Council on how long the program should be extended. The compromise preserves council unity over Iraq at a critical time, with U.N. weapons inspectors in the country searching for illegal arms.

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