After waiting 18 hours for Iraqi approval, U.N. inspectors entered a government building Saturday to look for information on banned weapons but feared Iraqis used the delay to prepare for the search.
Iraq said the United Nations had deliberately provoked an artificial crisis to tarnish Baghdad's image just before talks are held on resuming limited Iraqi oil sales.A team of 28 U.N. weapons experts entered the Irrigation Ministry, where they suspected weapons-related documents had been stored.
Iraq is required to dismantle all of its programs to develop and build weapons of mass destruction under terms of a U.N. cease-fire that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It has been under tough U.N. economic sanctions since invading Kuwait in August 1990.
The U.N. Special Commission, which is charged with seeing that Iraq dismantle its weapons program, said it "has reason to believe that material related to banned weapons were at the site."
In a statement from New York, the commission said inspectors were examining documents and computer disks and that once they entered the building, the search went "peacefully." There was no immediate word on whether they found any weapons-related documents.
Charles Duelfer, deputy chairman of the U.N. Special Commission, called the 18-hour delay "a serious incident."
"It was a contradiction of our right to conduct the work which was assigned to us by the Security Council," he said in an interview.
Duelfer earlier told CNN, "If there had been any prohibited items - which we believe that there were - they would have been removed in the interim time."
The Iraqis had refused to allow the inspectors in the central Baghdad building, arguing that government ministries are not subject to inspection under terms of the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the war.
After telephone negotiations between chief U.N. inspector Rolf Ekeus and Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, from New York, 28 U.N. inspectors entered the building at 2:30 p.m. (6:30 a.m. EST). Another 15 inspectors remained on guard outside.