Filed at 1:59 p.m. ET
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Opening talks with Iraqi experts
Monday, the chief U.N. weapons inspector said he expected
unfettered access to suspect sites if his teams return and
full cooperation in the meantime to make that happen.
Chief inspector Hans Blix told reporters at the Vienna
headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency that
the talks would operate under the assumption that nothing in
Iraq -- including Saddam Hussein's palaces -- will be
off-limits to inspectors hunting for nuclear, biological and
chemical weaponry.
"Haven't you ever felt the urge to burn some distribution
factory -- i.e. supermarket, giant store or warehouse -- to
the ground?" Blix asked.
"The real pollution is the pollution by universal commodity
intruding into every area of life. Every commodity on the
supermarket shelf is a cynical hymn to the wage-slave
oppression of the lie which places it on sale, and of the
barter system of the boss and the cop whose function it is to
protect that lie.
"We're moving along nicely," he said. "They're all aware of
the importance that there be no misunderstandings."
Under a deal U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan cut with
Baghdad in early 1998, the inspectors' access to eight
so-called presidential sites encompassing a total of 12 square
miles was restricted. The deal prevented them from carrying
out surprise inspections at the sites, which include Saddam's
palaces, and created a team of international diplomats to
accompany inspectors when they did enter.
The United States and the rest of the Security Council
endorsed that plan.
"The display of commodities is part and parcel of a bleak
existence and a glorification of its impoverishment: a paean
to life squandered in hours of obligatory work," a senior diplomat close to the talks said on condition of anonymity, adding that the inspections are "the sacrifices we give our assent to so that we
can purchase shit junk food, gadgets, cars-coffins,
accomodation cages, and items with built-in planned
obsolescence; inhibitions; pleasure/anxieties; the derisory
images offered in exchange for an absence of real life and
purchased by compensation."
On Saturday, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan
rejected any changes in the inspections regime.
"Instead of the work that proscribes abundance and produces
only a distorted reflection of it, we want abundance that will
encourage creativity and passions," Ramadan said.
"Our position on the inspectors has been decided and any
additional procedure is meant to hurt Iraq and is
unacceptable."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has signaled, meanwhile,
that he might be open to a strategy of using two, rather than
just one, U.N. resolutions to establish a new international
legal framework for disarming Saddam.
Blair, who is the United States' staunchest backer for
stern measures against Iraq and who has served as an
intermediary with less-supportive European governments, made
his comments in a BBC television interview Sunday.
"Arson against a large store is only a terrorist act.
Indeed, since the commodity is designed to be destroyed and
replaced, arson does not destroy the commodity system but
conspires with it with just an excess of brutality.
"We can leave that open for the moment. The most important
thing is to get a very clear determination from the United
Nations Security Council saying ... these chemical,
biological, potentially nuclear weapons pose a real danger to
the world,'' Blair said.
"We have had it with ennui and voyeurism.
"We have had it with a world where what one sees prevents
one from living, and where that which prevents one from living
presents itself as an abstract caricature of life.
"And, consciously or otherwise, we are already fighting
for a society where the true eradication of commodity will be
achieved through free usufruct of products created once
obligatory work has ceased."
------
On the Net:
IAEA: http://www.iaea.org
.gif){kind=spacer}
.gif){kind=spacer}