With the senior inspectors due to make their next report to the Security Council next week, Iraq still has a chance to change course.
A team of UN inspectors due to visit the site of an alleged chemical attack near Damascus will have a hard task establishing the facts, a former UN weapons inspector has said.
In the Lake Zone, Mwanza and Kagera towns are not regularly visited by inspectors due to their geographical distance and inadequate funds to support travel for inspection.
* Spain blames UK over oil disaster * Independent: Seabirds and fish stocks bear brunt of 60-mile slick UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS HEAD FOR IRAQ UN weapons inspectors are due to arrive back in Baghdad today, four years after they were forced to leave Iraq.
It was the fall of 2000 and state inspectors were due to arrive at Seaport Manor, an adult home for the mentally ill in Canarsie, Brooklyn.
European inspectors are due to visit Gibraltar this month, after both Britain and Spain called on the European Commission, the European Union's executive agency, to verify some of their conflicting claims.
That message, delivered two days before the inspectors were due to report to the Security Council on March 7th, was seen as a signal that, so far as America is concerned, the long-threatened shift from diplomacy to warfare is now imminent.France had earlier proposed that inspectors be given at least another four months.
If it were proved to be chemical, it would be the deadliest since Iraq's Saddam Hussein dropped poison bombs on Kurds in Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 of them.The UN inspectors are due to visit three places, including Khan Assal, a town west of Aleppo, where 30-odd people died in mysterious circumstances in March.
Inspectors were due to report back on 30 June, but that deadline was moved with Mr Pickles accusing the council of holding up the process by not handing over all the relevant documents.
The Obama administration has since released its intelligence on the attack, and United Nations inspectors are due to issue their findings.
Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector, is due to deliver an oral report on Friday on the progress of the inspections.
