Despite an Iraqi threat to shoot down U.S. spy planes, the United Nations is challenging Baghdad by sending out arms inspectors and saying it will proceed with sur-veil-lance flights.
Iraq reacted Tuesday by turning back U.N. weapons inspectors for a second day, saying it would not grant access to any teams that included Americans.U.N. representatives, meanwhile, are heading to Iraq to try to persuade Saddam Hussein to cancel orders to expel American inspectors by Wednesday.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan planned to telephone Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz to ask Baghdad to postpone the deadline until U.N. representatives finish their talks in the Iraqi capital, a U.N. official in New York said.
The U.N. envoys - from Algeria, Argentina and Sweden - were to arrive in Bagdad on Wednesday for a stay of no more than two days.
But Annan said the team will be delivering a message that Iraq has already rejected - rescind the expulsion order against the Americans and cooperate fully with the U.N. inspectors.
"Their job will be to explain in words of one syllable why the Iraqis have miscalculated once again in challenging the authority of the international community," British Ambassador John Weston said.
Annan told reporters the diplomats will "discuss with the Iraqi authorities the need for them to rescind the decision they have taken so that we do not create unnecessary escalation."
Those inspectors are trying to determine if Iraq has destroyed all weapons of mass destruction. That was a condition for ending the 1991 Persian Gulf War and for lifting economic sanctions imposed the previous year when Saddam's forces invaded Kuwait.
In the meantime, chief weapons inspector Richard Butler said it would be business as usual for the inspectors in Iraq. On Monday, the Iraqis refused to allow an American inspector to enter a suspected weapons storage site, prompting the United Nations to cancel three inspections planned that day.
"We will go back in the normal way tomorrow (Tuesday) in Iraq," Butler, an Australian, told reporters after briefing the Security Council. "I'm getting tired of talking about their nationalities. That's not relevant."
Butler also said an American U-2 surveillance flight scheduled for Wednesday "is authorized to go ahead."
In a letter to Butler on Sunday, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, noted that Iraqi air defense units were on alert for possible American air strikes. Hamdoon asked Butler to call off U.S. surveillance flights set for Wednesday and Friday.
A U.N. official said the Iraqis are believed to have SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, which shot down a U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960. The spy planes can fly as high as 70,000 feet, well out of the range of traditional anti-aircraft guns.
U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson said that seemed a clear threat to fire on U.S. planes, which fly surveillance missions for the United Nations. Whether Iraqi weapons can reach the high-flying aircraft is uncertain, but U.S. authorities still expressed outrage.
"We think this is an irresponsible escalation which we view with grave concern," Richardson said. "And needless to say, it's another demonstration of Iraqi irresponsibility and intransigence, which we view extremely seriously."