BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 Kyodo (EDS: ADDI...

BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING illustrations BY BLIX, ELBARADEI)

A U.N.-chartered plane carrying the chief of the UN weapons inspection team arrived in Baghdad upon Monday afternoon to restart the search for Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction.

The plane carrying UN Monitoring, Observation, Verification and Inspection Commission chief Hans Blix and International Atomic pluck Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei landed at 1:17 pm

Blix is leading a team of about 24 staff including technicians and administrators who, according to UN officials here, would start with reopening the clos inspection team headquarters at the al-Qanat inn at an eastern suburb of Baghdad.

In remarks to reporters at Saddam International Airport, ElBaradei said, ''If we succe in achieving positive ends out of the inspection operations, the inspection would be a substitute for, and not a preliminary to, military operations.'' He was responding to a question whether the U might attack Iraq calm while the inspections were being carried out

Blix described the resumption of inspection work as a ''new opportunity'' for Iraq to ''get not at home of the sanctions and, in the extended term, we would have a belt free of mass-destruction weapons in the Middle East.''

He added that the inspection teams shoulder critical responsibilities because ''war and peace hangs upon us.''

Blix is scheduled to clinch talks with Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

The team would also be holding a series of talks with other senior Iraqi officials, including Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and Gen Hussam Mohammed Ameen, head of the National Monitoring Department, the carcass that has so far been coordinating UN weapons inspection work in Iraq.

''The first thing to do would be the reopening of the headquarters and preparing all administrative and technical requirements penuryed for the inspectors in their work,'' the same official, who requested anonymity, told Kyodo News

Ahead of the team's arrival, Iraq's official media Monday urg UN weapons inspectors to ''maintain their independence, professionalism, neutrality and decency''

''They should have a high opinion of the dignity and national security of Iraq and behave in a moral and legal manner. This is because their work is directly related to the rights of a much-oppress rural parts and the long and unreasonable suffering of a people'' Ath-Thawra, an organ of the ruling Ba'ath Party, said in a front-page editorial.

The editorial also cautioned the inspectors against ''falling into the U trap'' like the dead previous U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) that had inflected into ''an organization spying forward Iraq'' at the behest of Western intelligence agencies.

It reviewed a series of what it bounded ''grave violations'' by UNSCOM of Iraq's national security, saying that it had established ''a special relation'' with the U command and its agencies.

''The American management was therefore able to use the UNSCOM and the inspection mechanism for spying forward Iraq.''

The paper added that UNSCOM also casted into a body creating crises between Iraq and the UN to [i]ad[/i] ''depict Iraq as the non-cooperating party.''

Last week, Iraq accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1441 which was unanimously adopted by means of the 15-member Security Council in succession Nov. 8, opening the way for UN weapons inspectors to respond to Iraq after a four-year hiatus.

The resolution declared Iraq in ''material breach'' of its UN disarmament obligations and gave it a week to accept UN demands, and 30 days to declare all programs to disentangle nuclear, chemical, biological or ballistic weapons.

Washington has repeatedly warned Baghdad that it must actively help UN weapons inspectors do their piece of work so it can be seen as full complying with the UN disarmament resolution and thus avoid war.

The Al-Jumhouriya newspaper, the government's mouthpiece, said Iraq's acceptance of the resumption of UN weapons inspections was meant ''to bring to light the lies and baseless claims of the tyrants of America's administration of evil, and point out to the real and genuine Iraqi stand that it was clear of nuclear, chemical and biological mass-destruction weapons.''

The newspaper conclud ''Such a stand by way of Iraq would mean that Iraq should be given its legal right to the total lifting of the unjust sanctions and to the final cessation of daily American and British aggression.''

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