Iraq has turned over a list of most of the suppliers for its nuclear weapons program, complying partly with a key Security Council demand after balking for months, a top U.N. weapons expert said Monday.
Maurizio Zifferero, deputy chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iraq submitted what it said was a list of 90 percent of the foreign suppliers and agreed to answer questions about the list."As usual, we will press them" for the remainder, Zifferero said.
Zifferero's eight-man team of nuclear experts and a team of ballistics weapons inspectors arrived in the capital Monday at a time when Baghdad is seeking better relations with Washington and a halt to U.S. air attacks.
Their treatment by Saddam Hussein's government will be considered a test of Iraq's compliance with Persian Gulf War cease-fire terms and its attitude toward U.N. teams. Baghdad has accused them of harboring U.S. spies in some cases, a charge denied by U.N. officials and teams.
Iraq had maintained that turning over the list of suppliers would violate its sovereignty over trading relationships. That is the argument it has cited in repeatedly denying information on suppliers to the U.N. commission that is overseeing the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Baghdad's sudden cooperation could be a last-minute bid to persuade the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions. The council was meeting Monday to decide whether to renew sanctions. It reviews the sanctions every 60 days.
Defense Secretary Les Aspin said Sunday in an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation": "The object is to comply with the U.N. resolutions. I personally believe that also means that Saddam Hussein has to go."
Zifferero, an Italian, and Nikita Smidovich, a Russian in charge of ballistic arms and other inspections, both said they had been well-received by Iraqi officials.
They arrived less than a week after Iraq ended a standoff with the United Nations over U.N. flights into the country from the special commission's regional headquarters in Bahrain.
Iraq had refused to guarantee the safety of the flights as long as they crossed the allied-imposed no-fly zones where U.S. warplanes have struck Iraqi military targets several times in recent weeks.
A chemical-weapons destruction team came in Thursday and Friday. It and a three-man aerial surveillance team already are at work and have reported good cooperation.
U.S. warplanes repeatedly attacked Iraqi missile sites last week and bombarded a factory near Baghdad with cruise missiles in response to Iraq's refusal to honor gulf war cease-fire conditions.
Iraq declared a unilateral cease-fire Tuesday, but the United States says Baghdad has not honored its own truce. The most recent U.S. attack came Saturday night after anti-aircraft guns fired at three Navy planes, U.S. officials said.
After leaving Baghdad following an inspection trip last fall, Zif-ferero said that Iraq's program to develop nuclear weapons was basically defunct and that the major unresolved issues were obtaining the list of suppliers and securing long-term U.N. monitoring.
He said his group would work this week on a plan for long-term monitoring.
Under the gulf war cease-fire, Iraq must permit U.N. inspection of its long-range missiles and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and research programs and allow their destruction. Under a related U.N. resolution, Iraq must accept long-term monitoring to ensure it never develops weapons of mass destruction.
Smidovich declined to discuss the inspections his seven-member team would carry out over the next four days.
On Sunday, Iraq denied its anti-aircraft batteries fired at U.S. warplanes again Saturday and insisted the cease-fire it declared remained in effect in the northern and southern no-fly zones.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Les Aspin said it was not certain the Iraqis opened fire Sat-urday night in the southern no-fly zone, but he stressed the pilot thought he was shot at.
U.S. military spokesmen stood by the report that American planes were fired on, and a second pilot on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk reported seeing gun flashes during the Saturday night incident.
President Clinton has pledged to continue the policy begun by former President Bush to respond strongly to Iraqi threats to allied planes in the air exclusion zones. But U.S. attacks have been criticized by some nations as excessive and have eroded support within the coalition that forced Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait two years ago.