Mr. President,

I am grateful for the opportunity given to me to informally brief the Council on the visit to Baghdad last week by myself and the Director-General of the IAEA, Dr. ElBaradei, and delegations accompanying us. In doing this, I shall also touch on our readiness for inspections. I have shared my comments this morning with Dr. ElBaradei and I speak on his behalf as well as on my own.

The journey and the visit were covered intensely by the media. However, I shall try to provide you a picture that is more coherent and comprehensive than that which emerges from the public coverage.

The Council adopted Resolution 1441 (2002) on Friday 8 November. Today, about two weeks after the adoption of the resolution, the first group of UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors have arrived in Baghdad and the essential physical infrastructure for the resumed inspection regime is in place and is being tested. The first inspections are scheduled for the day after tomorrow, that is, on 27 November. This will be within 19 days of the adoption of the resolution rather than the 45 days allowed.

Any statements or writings you may see about where any inspections - whether the first or subsequent - will go, are speculations. The Council has authorized us to go anywhere any time and we intend to do so without telling anyone in advance.

While the group of UNMOVIC inspectors flown in today are from the staff that worked at our headquarters, groups from our roster of trained inspectors will be successively flown to Baghdad in the weeks to come. By Christmas time we expect to have some 100 inspectors plus support staff in place. The logistics are also being rapidly strengthened. Thanks to assistance from the Government of New Zealand we already have communications people and medics in place and, before the end of this week, we may have the first of eight helicopters in Baghdad.

An important point in the infrastructure is the field office in Larnaca.

The Government of Cyprus has been most helpful to us throughout and an agreement has been concluded with it enabling us to have a field office and a launching pad for air transport to Iraq. An L-130 plane is in place to ferry inspectors and other staff as well as equipment to Iraq from Larnaca. It was this plane that took 30 of us from UNMOVIC, the IAEA and UN security to Baghdad last Monday (18 November).

Now to our journey.

On arrival in Baghdad we visited the Canal Hotel, where UNOHCI has its headquarters and where the floor belonging to UNSCOM and the IAEA has been sealed awaiting resumed inspections. We reopened the offices, which were covered with four years' of dust and grime and bore witness to the abrupt departure of the staff in December 1998. The refurbishments have started. Some of the new equipment needed was brought already on this first trip. About half of those who flew in last Monday stay and will be joined by more support staff and by inspectors. The current premises will not be enough and we plan to expand them.

I am confident that the cooperation and relation with UNOHCI, which has kindly lent us a helping hand in Baghdad at this initial stage, will be very good, just as the cooperation here in New York is excellent between us and the Oil for Food Programme. Our staff knows that the sister UN organizations, whose leaders we met and talked to in Baghdad, perform crucial humanitarian and development work in Iraq and these organizations know that eliminating all weapons of mass destruction and avoiding armed conflict are preconditions for further success in the pursuit of humanitarian and development objectives.

Our visit taking place during Ramadan, the talks with the Iraqi officials were held in the evenings. The Iraqi delegation was headed, as at the talks in Vienna a month and a half earlier, by Dr. Al Sa'adi. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Naji Sabri, received Dr. ElBaradei and myself briefly on the 19th. We also had a meeting with the diplomatic corps on that day.

Now to the talks.

The Iraqi side assured us that Iraq intended to provide full cooperation with us in the implementation of Resolution 1441 (2002), while expecting correct and professional conduct from the inspecting organizations. They noted that there would have been no legal obstacle to inspections starting under Resolution 1284 (1999) a month earlier and regretted that this had not been the case. For my part, I noted that the resolution cited would have allowed inspections much earlier than that. I noted further that the new resolution is binding upon both Iraq and us and that the first inspections were scheduled for 27 November. This means, incidentally, that in accordance with operative para. 5 of Resolution 1441 (2002), the UNMOVIC and IAEA updating report to the Security Council is due on 27 January 2003.

We examined and explained in some detail to the Iraqi delegation how we understood the time lines of both Resolution 1441 (2002) and Resolution 1284 (1999), stressing the vital importance of the declaration, which Iraq has to make on 8 December.

The Iraqi side expressed some uncertainty about how it should appropriately prepare this declaration. It noted that the declaration was to be submitted not only to UNMOVIC and the IAEA but also to the Security Council. Who was to examine it? Were the weapons programme parts of the declaration expected to be an updating of the former "full final and complete" declarations? Would programmes claimed to be for non-weapons purposes in the chemistry sector have to comprise items of remote relevance, e.g. the production of plastic slippers? In view of the fact that time for submission was short and omissions could have serious consequences, the Iraqi side said it had some concerns.

Dr. ElBaradei and I said we had no authority to interpret the provisions of operative para. 3, which was directed to Iraq. Nevertheless we expressed some views on a personal basis. Clearly, the most important thing was that whatever there existed by way of weapons programmes and proscribed items should be fully declared. I added that four years had passed since the last inspections and that many governments believed that WMD programmes remained in Iraq. The Council had wanted to offer Iraq a last opportunity.

If the Iraqi side were to state - as it still did at our meeting - that there were no such programmes, it would need to provide convincing documentary or other evidence. What was found in FFCDs submitted to UNSCOM in many cases left it an open question whether some weapons remained.

Dr. ElBaradei and I suggested that submission of the declaration in the form of CD ROMS might be the most practical; that programmes, which seemed remote from any weapons field, perhaps might be listed with their sites and with notes that more detailed information would be supplied on request.

The UNMOVIC side transmitted informally a list of comments and questions resulting from our preliminary analysis of the backlog of semi-annual monitoring declarations, which had been given to us in Vienna on 1 October. We proposed that responses should be given as soon as possible and not await the next regular submission of semi-annual declarations, which would be in January. The Iraqi side stated that some points had not been well checked before submission. There had been some discrepancies and gaps in the missile area. This would be corrected and resubmitted.

From the UNMOVIC side I made a number of further points:

It would be desirable, as we had suggested on earlier occasions, that the implementing legislation prohibiting citizens to engage in programmes of WMDs be enacted. It was called for already in the OMV plan approved by resolution 715 (1991) and should not be very difficult.

We would propose to set up a field office in Mosul without delay and would request Iraqi assistance for this purpose very soon. We would have inspection and support staff as well as UN security guards there. Further offices might be set up in other places later. For now it was Mosul because the largest number of sites outside the Baghdad region were in the Mosul region.

We would further need Iraqi assistance in the expansion of the premises at the Canal Hotel. If the UN was enabled to lease empty land next to the hotel, as it had requested, UNMOVIC could use some of it to erect prefabricated buildings giving needed space for its staff - which would be larger than that which UNSCOM had had. We agreed that the hot line between our office and the National Monitoring Directorate should be re-established and be available 24 hours a day.

Resolution 1441, para. 7 contains an authorization to request names of personnel currently and formerly associated with Iraq's programmes for WMDs and missiles. I stated that UNMOVIC planned to make use of this authority.

The right explicitly given under Resolution 1441, para. 7 to access to presidential sites "equal to that at other sites" would, I said, be exercised and carried out in the same professional manner as at other sites. The Iraqi side took note of this but remarked that the entry into a presidential site or a ministry was not exactly the same thing as entry into a factory.

Given the heavy interest by Iraqi and other media, which we had experienced, we stressed that inspection was a serious business and could not be allowed to turn into some circus. We made it clear, accordingly, that we would not accept media presence at or in inspection sites or areas during inspections. The Iraqi side took note of this but explained that it might invite media to visit such sites after the inspectors had finished their work. We have stationed a spokesman in Baghdad to give brief factual information about inspections, which have taken place. Any more substantial comments will be made in New York.

I have concluded my report on our visit to Baghdad and on the state of our preparation for resumed inspections. However, I should like to mention that going to Baghdad I had the welcome opportunity to stop on the way for some hours in Paris and brief the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Villepin, on the objectives of the mission and to discuss with him and senior officials the implementation of the resolution. I was assured of firm French support for the implementation stage and for effective inspections. I had also occasion in Paris for a short but helpful talk with Foreign Minister Castaneda of Mexico, who was in town. On our way back from Baghdad, Dr. ElBaradei and I were invited to meet with the President of Cyprus, Mr. Clerides, and on my further journey to New York, I met with officials in London and was invited for a talk with Prime Minister Blair. He assured me of the UK Government's support for effective inspections and its determination to ensure the implementation of Resolution 1441 (2002) and the elimination of WMDs and long-range missiles from Iraq.