In comments to the UN Security Council, he warned Baghdad that not finding any weapons of mass destruction did not mean there were none. It was up to Iraq to come clean, he said, thereby providing the United States with more ammunition in its case for war.

"Iraq cannot just maintain that it must be deemed to be without proscribed items as long as there is no evidence to the contrary," he said.

At the same time, the lack of any concrete evidence of an arms cache was expected to produce criticism of any move toward an attack, as the United States builds a powerful force in the Gulf region.

A clear effort was made by close US ally Britain as well as Germany to lower expectations that a major inspection report on Jan. 27 could be a trigger for military action.

But US Ambassador John Negroponte also stressed the burden remained on Iraq to reveal its arms programs. "Anything less is not cooperation and will constitute further material breach," he said, using legal code words that could mean war.

He said the inspectors were not in Baghdad "to serve as detectives working to overcome elaborate concealment mechanisms."

Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said the inspectors needed more time to do their work but would come to the council if there was a serious violation.

'CALM DOWN'

"So by definition the 27th of January won't necessarily produce anything new or dramatic," he said. "So my advice is calm down."

And Germany's UN ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, said, "The inspections should continue, and for that reason there are no grounds for military action."

Blix and his counterpart Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, briefed the Security Council behind closed doors on their assessments of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration, submitted on Dec. 7.

"We now have been there for some two months and have been covering the country in ever-wider sweeps, and we haven't found any smoking guns," Blix said.

But that did not mean Iraq was clean of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles, he said, according to a text of his briefing.

"Prompt access is by no means sufficient to give confidence that nothing is hidden in a large country with an earlier record of avoiding disclosures," Blix said. "In this respect we have not so far made progress."

ElBaradei also said he needed more evidence before he could reach a conclusion on nuclear materials and urged Iraq to provide "active cooperation."

Blix called Iraq's arms declaration "rich in volume but poor in information about weapons issues and practically devoid of new evidence on such issues."

Blix said issues such as VX nerve gas and the import of missile engines and raw material for the production of solid missile fuel had not been accounted for.

He also described a new document Iraq had submitted that was snatched from a German inspector in 1998 at Baghdad's force headquarters, as revealing a "significant discrepancy concerning the numbers of special munitions."

Experts familiar with the document, given to Blix on Nov. 30, said it shows that 6,000 fewer 550-pound (250 kg) and 1,100-pound (500 kg) chemical bombs were used in Iraq's war against Iran, from 1980 to 1988, than Baghdad had claimed.

ElBaradei told the council UN nuclear experts were trying to track down a missing 32 tonnes of a high explosive known as HMX, which was placed under UN seal in 1998 and could be used to detonate a nuclear bomb.

But he said specially made aluminum tubes that Iraq was suspected of trying to buy to enrich uranium for weapons were actually intended for a rocket engine program, as Baghdad had claimed all along.

Oil prices rose after Blix's initial comments, which dealers believed could move Washington closer to carrying out a threat to attack to end any banned weapons programs.

IRAQI RESPONSE

In Baghdad, Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, the chief liaison office for the inspection teams, denied there were gaps in the arms declaration and an official Iraqi newspaper, al-Thawra, said Washington and London had formed an "axis of deception."

Blix said his weapons teams would begin interviewing scientists and other Iraqi experts shortly. But he did not say whether the Iraqis would be taken out of the country, perhaps to Cyprus, for that purpose, as the United States wants.

Amin said inspectors had made an informal request to interview experts outside the country.

"It was an idea. There is nothing official presented to us. It was an oral request by inspectors," he said.

France, which will play a key role in deciding whether the Security Council would say Iraq was in violation of a Nov. 8 resolution, urged Iraq to cooperate with the inspectors. Its UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said Baghdad had to give inspectors additional information "and lift uncertainty."

Any material breach would have to be assessed by the Security Council, according to its Resolution 1441. But the council does not necessarily have to authorize war although Britain, France and other members would prefer that option.

For a material breach to be declared, the resolution requires false statement or omissions in Iraq's arms declarations as well as a failure by Iraq to comply with and cooperate in implementing the resolution.

(China Daily January 10, 2002)