No targets in Iraq justify military strike: Russian arms expert

MOSCOW, Feb 4 (AFP) - Iraq has no stocks of weapons of mass destruction or storage facilities for them which could be targeted in a military strike, a senior Russian chemical weapons expert told Interfax Wednesday.

Anatoly Kuntsevich, chemical weapons adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the United States and its allies "have no targets in Iraq that justify destruction."

Iraq now has no stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, nor the means to produce them, Kuntsevich said, according to the Russian news agency.

Referring to the controversial so-called presidential sites, which the UN wants opened up to inspection, Kuntsevich said they could not be used to produce or store weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has threatened to use military force if Iraq continues to deny access to the sites to inspectors of the UN Special Commission on Iraqi disarmament (UNSCOM).

Kuntsevich did not rule out that Iraq had several laboratories developing protection against chemical weapons, but he said such facilities were not banned by the United Nations and the quantity of substances produced there posed no threat.

Kuntsevich also criticised the composition of UNSCOM, saying the experts led by Richard Butler "are mainly professional diplomats who often cannot draw correct conclusions with regard to the facilities inspected."

Russian President Boris Yeltsin strongly warned Washington Wednesday against resorting to military means to force Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions adopted after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

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